My sons go to a school like the one in Adolescence

Here’s what it’s really like

I’ve read and listened to so much about the Netflix show Adolescence. Mainly from erudite media folk. Commentary has on the whole been intelligent and thought provoking. But you know what? Their kids don’t go to a school like the one in Adolescence and mine do. Want to know what it’s really like?

Casually filming a fight - nothing unusual.

Now I need to caveat this with a little background. I attended a fee paying school. It wasn’t madly academic but it was small. Two classes of 20 ish per year. Listed building. Strict. We still had corporal punishment. Yes, my parents signed a form to allow teachers to hit me! It was the 90’s, what can I say? Being caned was the least of our worries. One of the sixth formers married the art teacher at the end of summer term, and many the boy was removed from the music room by their hair. The French teacher wrote me inappropriate letters for 2 years after I left. I think he’s dead now.

What I’m trying to say is that a state city secondary school is alien to me. I don’t know the beast first hand. Us private school kids were frightened of our state school counterparts. I walked the long route to my grandmothers just to avoid the local kids jeers. They scared me. One of them now decorates my parent’s house and is apparently a very nice man. He doesn’t remember his taunts. I don’t forgive him. I like to hold a grudge.

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Back to the year 2025. Sadly if you add a divorce to a freelance career and throw in THREE children the result is that my kids were never going to be sent to a private school. Not a hope in hell. (For international readers, a non-London private day school is 10 - 15k per year here in the UK). So off to the local state school they went. It’s an interesting journey. If all this is new to you too, strap in, it’s a wild ride. Here are some insights into life at a city based secondary school in the UK today, from a mother of three sons:

• Boys are regularly punished for behaviour that is ignored in girls.

• Boys are punished more frequently and more severely by female teachers than male teachers. They are punished for behaviour girls are not. There is no dialogue open for boys to discuss how victimised they feel, they have to suck it up.

• Boys are not allowed to spend break time in large groups because they are “intimidating”.

• Poor behaviour is handled in an extremely punitive way, ‘isolations’ are rife. An isolation is where a student spends the day in a designated classroom in silence with a teacher babysitting them, along with other isolated students of all ages. They collect work from the subjects they are missing and complete it alone without help.

• Mobile phone use in school is rife despite it being a detention worthy offence.

• Punishment regarding mobile phone use is inconsistent. Kids watch videos sitting in the front row of a class yet get an isolation for using their phone at break time.

• Schools are dirty and in a state of disrepair. The walls are damaged and crumbling, the paint is scuffed. There’s litter everywhere; in the school, in the corridors, in the playground.

• The toilets are not a safe place to use the facilities. Other students can unlock the stalls from the outside.

• Being gay or having special educational needs makes you a target for bullies. Still.

• Schools are similar to a policed state. If a complaint is made, teachers collect witness statements and interview students. The teachers are judge, jury and jailor.

• Fights are common. Not just between boys.

• If you’re not a jock or a musician there’s very little to do after school. Extra curricular activities are heavily sports based.

• WhatsApp groups exist for whole years to join. These now begin in primary school. Some of the most shocking comments in year 6 (age 10/11) come from the girls. Open bullying, fat shaming, racism. The boys seem out of their depth.

Maybe it’s different where you live? Do mothers of girls tell a similar tale? Perhaps the crisis feels central to boys purely due to my own bias. Or you may well have read some of these observations and thought ‘quite right!’ Let’s be real here, large groups of teenage boys, all hulking and often six foot and hirsute, can indeed be scary. Their disappointment at being split into smaller groups of four isn’t more important than female students and teachers living in fear.

A vast amount of time is dedicated to policing and punishing students. There do need to be consequences, of course. Whether removing a child from face to face teaching is a deterrent to poor behaviour is debatable. I guess there must be research to back the use of this up? I hope there is. For the ‘good’ students an isolation is an opportunity to get ahead without disruption. For those already struggling it’s a day sitting alone at a desk, bored, disengaged and falling further behind. Have you ever sat in a classroom and felt out of your depth? I have. It’s a horrible feeling. A mixture of shame, self loathing, anger and panic. The only time I was ever disruptive at school was in a subject where I felt this.

One thing I know for sure is that many boys feel they are assumed to be bad. They feel their treatment is unjust and that nobody in charge is listening. What’s the outcome of this? Simmering anger and resentment I guess. Not an excuse for violence. Kindling though? I think so. Just add the right circumstances and you’ve got a fire on your hands. A sprinkling of Tate and his pals, a serving of poor parenting and up it all goes!

I don’t pretend to know the answers. I have some ideas of course. Having watched Adolescence twice now, once alone and once with a teen, I can’t shake off how utterly responsible (or rather irresponsible) the parents were. Their own love story the centre of their family, the father’s emotions and wishes trumping everyone else’s, refusing to take ownership of their child being online until the small hours, not accepting their child for who he was, the role of the mother in their family reduced to a housekeeper (and a placater) in the eyes of the males. Just really crap, preoccupied, busy parents, but no doubt a common approach in these times of requiring two incomes to make ends meet. Kids just need and want our time, don’t they? That’s really the answer to so many parenting woes from cradle to teen; presence. And yet time is what so few of us have spare.

If I were in charge (of schools, the world… you know, Queen of everything) there’d be some new rules. I’d make it very clear from day one of kids phone usage that their mobile is not their property, it’s their parents, because they pay for it. As such their parents will look at it whenever they want and it can’t be kept in bedrooms overnight. I’d employ more male teachers, give those boys extra male role models. I’d change the language of school punishments so that children are not treated as offenders. I’d fund repairs to schools because when an environment is in disrepair then the pride has gone and we know where that leads. There’d be consequences for littering, for the same reason. I’d fund youth clubs. I’d fund community service schemes because there’s nothing like doing something worthwhile as a team for feeling damned good about yourself. I’d make parents culpable for the behaviour of their children when out and about at night. I’d ban phone usage at school; they’d be handed in at the beginning of the day and issued at the end. I’d make parents spend time with their kids, I’d run classes on how to do this. Part of this would be explaining why parents need to put their own phones down. I’d change the size of secondary schools; more schools with less pupils. I’d make all this happen and more, so that we don’t make monsters of our kids. They aren’t born that way are they? We’re the shapers. It’s our fault.

But in lieu of unlimited resources and an ideal world I guess I’ll just stick to loving and listening and keeping my fingers firmly crossed.

What about you? What would you do?

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