Showing ‘Adolescence' in schools not the answer
THE recent Netflix show Adolescence has prompted much discussion around misogyny among school age boys.
The creators have been to Downing Street to discuss the issues and, as a result, many people are calling for the programme to be shown in schools.
The series begins with the police bursting into 14-year-old Jamie Miller's family home and arresting him on suspicion of murdering Katie, his classmate.
There are no easy answers for his motivation, no dark family secrets or abuse are disclosed, but it questions what leads one boy to commit murder when others do not.
It touches on Incels (involuntary celibate), influencers, radicalisation, attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls.
It also highlights how little we, as adults, understand the pressures of peer and school relationships.
Recent reports show children feel less safe in school than before the pandemic.
The UCL (University College London) report (2025) says only 21 per cent of girls and 31 per cent of boys in England strongly agreed they were safe at school.
The teacher's union NASUWT has reported a surge in levels of violence and abuse in the classroom with over 27 per cent of female teachers reporting verbal abuse several times a week.
And nearly 30 per cent of teachers from black, Caribbean or African backgrounds reported regular physical abuse from pupils — double that of their white counterparts.
Something certainly needs to be done but showing 'Adolescence' in schools is not the answer.
It is a brilliant and gritty drama — not an educational resource — and to show a 15-rated show to children across secondary schools is an unsafe, knee-jerk reaction.
Teachers are not experts in male violence against women and girls and it is unfair to ask them to show, discuss or stop the film to ask questions to provide context or safety.
The series itself shows students responding to police and teacher-led discussions with shock, dismissal, mockery and disruption, all of which are common when children are faced with traumatic, disturbing or overwhelming content.
There is no specialist support provided for children who may have real-life, similar experiences who may either be further traumatised or silenced by the reaction of peers.
Katie, the murdered girl, is framed throughout as a bully as if this is sufficient reason to kill her.
There are several blogs citing Katie deserved to be harmed, that she 'got what was coming' and that Jamie was justified in his anger because of this.
It is victim blaming.
When we are already living in a society that sees one woman murdered approximately every three days is this how we need to educate children?
I would suggest the focus should be on how we are teaching boys to become decent and caring men.
What works is education which is safe, trauma-informed, grounded in empathy, promotes discussion and is delivered by subject matter experts in small, safe groups with access to support services.
If you are a parent and your school is planning to show Adolescence please ask them what support they have put in place for your child and how any disclosures will be managed.
If you are a teacher and are looking to access safe, proven resources to address these issues contact enquiries@purpleleaf.org.uk.
Our columnist Jocelyn Anderson is CEO for West Mercia Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre (WMRSASC).
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Why a blank cheque won't solve Britain's policing woes
When it emerged last week that Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had written to the Prime Minister warning that 'stark choices' lay ahead without significant investment in policing it all sounded rather familiar. The week before, Rowley, along with five other police chiefs, had penned a newspaper article saying that Government pledges on knife crime, violence against women and girls, and neighbourhood policing would be at risk without additional funding. That itself was an echo of similar statements the Met Commissioner and others had made over the previous six months. Clearly then, ahead of Wednesday's spending review, money is very much on police minds. Few would argue that forces across England and Wales haven't continued to struggle financially since the 'austerity years' of 2010 to 2019, when the jobs of 20,000 officers and 23,500 civilian staff were cut and hundreds of police stations closed. But the police can't pin all their woes on a lack of cash. Inefficiency is baked into the structure of the service, which was designed half a century ago, while forces haven't adapted quickly enough to seize on the potential offered up by new technology such as artificial intelligence. And although there may not be as many officers as chiefs would like, the number has returned to pre-austerity levels, with a near-record headcount of 148,886 last September. Meanwhile, public confidence in policing has been hit by a succession of self-made scandals, from the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, to police 'selfies' taken at a murder scene. Less than half of people questioned last year as part of the Office for National Statistics' authoritative Crime Survey said police were doing a good job, down from 63 per cent ten years ago. In fact, it's the lowest figure in two decades. At the same time, an increasingly common complaint is that officers aren't there when people need them. A staggering 54 per cent said they never see police patrols – double the figure recorded 15 years ago. 'I hear law-abiding citizens saying, 'What's the point of calling the police?'' says Andy Trotter, former chief constable of British Transport Police. 'What police chiefs were saying about not being able to tackle crime without extra funding – most people were saying 'What's new?' It has gone on for years. 'Imagine how many solvable crimes aren't being solved,' he adds. Trotter says police officers are 'overwhelmed' by the demands on their time and have had to 'prioritise' which crimes to focus on. That has meant offences such as shoplifting, phone theft and car crime are all too often neglected. The proportion of shoplifting cases resulting in a suspect being charged has fallen to 18 per cent from 28 per cent, in 2016, when a new system of calculating detection rates was introduced. Crimes classed as 'theft from the person', where phones, handbags and wallets are snatched, have meanwhile seen prosecution levels plummet to less than one per cent, and just one in fifty car thefts result in a charge or summons. 'Confidence in policing comes from nicking people – it's something about the everyday laying on of police hands. And it reassures the public – people want to see some action,' says Trotter, who served as an officer for 45 years in three forces, including the Met. 'I used to say, 'Get your hands on them, get cuffs on them, get them in the van'. As a cop in the West End, it would take 30 minutes to process someone. But now, with centralised custody suites and the paperwork involved, you're out of action for hours, so there's a real reluctance in marginal cases to make an arrest and leave colleagues behind,' he says. The arrest figures provide clear evidence to support Trotter's claim. In the year to the end of March 2024, there were 720,506 arrests across England and Wales, with the number of police officers at the time standing at 142,072. That works out as 5.1 arrests per officer – more than half the arrest rate, 10.5, in 2009, before policing budgets were cut. The drop in arrest levels may also be partly a result of the changing crime caseload, with a larger number of offences which are more complex to investigate, such as sexual violence and online fraud. In just over a decade, the number of sexual offences recorded by police has more than doubled to 205,000 last year, while police logged nearly 1.3 million offences of fraud and computer misuse, representing one in five of all crimes. There are growing concerns too that officers have become embroiled in petty squabbles on social media at the expense of more pressing public concerns. The arrest of a couple by Hertfordshire Police, following a bitter row with a local school, highlighted the way in which it appeared police had become deflected from their core mission. 'It's breathtaking that it could be thought to be worthwhile to send six police officers to a couple who were sending WhatsApp messages about a school – they'd be much better off catching prolific burglars and serial sex abusers,' says Sir Tom Winsor, who served for ten years as head of the policing watchdog, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services. Central to concerns about the effective deployment of police officers is the recording of non-hate crime incidents (NCHIs). Analysis by The Telegraph shows that almost 100,000 NCHIs were logged by forces over the last decade, with last year's figure still around 75 per cent of the total in 2021 – when police were urged to scale back on their use. NCHIs are not criminal offences, but incidents perceived by the complainant to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on their 'protected characteristics', which includes their race or religion. They are defended by police as a means of gathering intelligence and monitoring community tensions, in order to forestall criminal behaviour. But should officers spend their valuable hours noting social media posts that are merely insulting or offensive? Winsor is doubtful. 'It's the online version of the 'broken windows' theory – nip it in the bud and it won't get worse,' says the 67-year-old lawyer. 'But there is a degree of proportionality that is necessary because you can't do everything.' Police officers could certainly do a lot more if forces made the most of advances in technology, to free them from mundane jobs, such as redacting sensitive documents, typing up crime reports and transferring information onto separate databases. Winsor recalls a visit to Lancashire Police in his early days as Chief Inspector of Constabulary. 'An officer told me that in order to find out what the force knew about a person, an address, a vehicle or a weapon he had to interrogate 12 different systems. Things are better now but probably not as good as the public would expect,' he says. In 2023, a productivity review led by two former chief constables identified 26 ways of freeing-up 38 million hours of police time. That would equate to 20,000 extra police officers. The recommendations included cutting red tape, reducing sickness absence and using computer technology for clerical tasks. A second report from the productivity panel, in 2024, said a further 23 million hours could be saved – including through the expansion of AI. 'Modern technology is the golden key to police efficiency and effectiveness,' says Winsor. Yet, progress on technology has been painfully slow – and not helped by a failure to manage large-scale projects, such as ESN (Emergency Services Network), an upgrade on the ageing emergency services communications network Airwave, which is a decade behind schedule and £3.1 billion over budget. 'You have to lay much of it at the door of the Home Office,' says Trotter. 'The replacement of Airwave has gone on for years – it's an area that has not been a success, it's wasted a lot of money and is still not resolved. It needs an inquiry,' he adds. There are glaring inefficiencies in other areas, too. Across England and Wales, each of the 43 forces, no matter how large or small, has its own leadership team, civilian support set-up and administrative functions, such as payroll, legal affairs and human resources. Pooling some of that work would make financial sense, says Winsor. 'The back office stuff could and should be done either regionally or nationally, in the way it's done in the NHS or the military,' he says. In 2022, a report from the independent think-tank, the Police Foundation, estimated that forces in England and Wales could save 'hundreds of millions' of pounds annually by combining support teams – as well as purchasing police uniform, equipment, vehicles, forensic services and computers centrally, rather than negotiating individual contracts with suppliers, as many constabularies do. But it seems the introduction of police and crime commissioners, a decade earlier, cemented a 'localist' approach, hindering prospects for developing a more cohesive and less fragmented system of policing, with the economies of scale that would result. 'The police and crime commissioner model has some strengths but it can hold things back, because in my time there were far too many who could not see beyond their force boundaries – and crime doesn't stop at force boundaries,' says Winsor, who left the watchdog three years ago. The author of the Police Foundation report, its former director Rick Muir, is now working as a Home Office adviser, developing plans for a white paper, based around the establishment of a new National Centre of Policing. It is long overdue. Rowley and other police leaders support the case for a reorganisation. Although their immediate concern is whether they'll have enough resources over the next three years, they are aware that it is not just about the money – radical structural reform is needed to put forces on a long-term sustainable financial footing and ensure the public get the police service they deserve. As Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Secretary, put it at the weekend, the police must 'do their bit' and 'embrace change'. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
Troubling on-campus incident sparks concerns over LAUSD's move to defund police department
Years after the Los Angeles Unified School District defunded its police department, a troubling event has once again sparked concerns that campuses are not as safe as they should be for students and their families. Parent Elizabeth Funes-Lara says her injustice began in March, when she stopped at a magnet-school bus stop outside of Manual Arts High School to pick up her 11-year-old son. Her other child, a two-year-old boy, was riding in the backseat. As she tried to pull out of the area, Funes-Lara says a black SUV suddenly backed up to try and block her in. The incident was captured on the school's surveillance system and was being recorded on the mother's cell phone. "I know she's going to do something, so I'm recording," she recalled. The video of the incident shows the female driver, an LAUSD Safe Passage Ambassador, walking straight for her window before a brief verbal confrontation that quickly escalated. "She punched me and scratched my face," Funes-Lara said. "I'm just in disbelief that someone who works at school with children is capable of doing that." She says that aside from the injuries, her children and their safety are her primary concerns. "All that screaming, for him it was traumatizing," she said. "I try not to cry, because I don't want to scare him, but I don't think they should be witnessing someone hitting their mother." Gil Gamez with the Los Angeles School Police Association says that his officers used to patrol the school where the incident took place. He says that if one of them did what the district's worker did, they would be in prison. But since the school board defunded the department, cutting the budget by nearly 20% and its officers by 33% in 2022, police have been pushed off many campuses and replaced with private community groups with a program called "Safe Passage." "They moved police officers off-campus, they moved everybody out of the way and they gave these security guard companies full access to the students on and off campus, without any training, without any mentorship, for sure without a police officer next to them," he said. "They don't know how to handle things, and some of these individuals are formerly incarcerated individuals." Gamez pointed to another man who worked with high schoolers, who also has a criminal record. That man once revealed at an LAUSD board meeting that he has served 21 years of a 30 years to life sentence. Court records show that the same woman who attacked Funes-Lara also served jail time for violating her probation following a forgery conviction back in 2018. "I don't see why LAUSD would hire her," Gamez said. "She should not be in a coveted position of a school security personnel around a child's school with a record like that." He says that no police department, including the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and the Los Angeles School Police Department would hire someone like this, because it's unethical. While there have been numerous incidents involving guns on campus, fights and stabbings this year, LAUSD's data shows that, overall, the violent crime numbers are down compared to the last year. However, the number of rapes and aggravated assaults have spiked. The woman who allegedly assaulted Funes-Lara works for a community organization called Boys 2 Gentlemen. The district now pays Keith Linton, who owns Boys 2 Gentlemen, more than $500,000 a year for his 60 employees that service the nearly 25,000 kids at 20 LAUSD schools, he says. KCAL News has profiled his program before, and that story can be viewed here. He also says that, while his program aims to help provide safe passage to students and their families, what happened to Funes-Lara should never have occurred. "What should happen now is what we did. That employee was terminated, that employee will never have a chance with LAUSD, and what we've done is, we've revved up our training," Linton said. "There should be no employee on any campus that works for me that does what that employee did." Though he says it's never certain what could happen from one day to the next, he's dedicated to his cause of making sure campuses remain safe. "I can't tell you today that out of my north of 60 employees, that tomorrow there's not going to be an incident with a kid, or a verbal exchange with a parent, but I cant tell you, as a leader, I'm out here 20 hours a day and I'm at every school." He's a former LAPD officer who says he does train all of his employees and does run background checks. Even so, he says, nothing came back on the woman involved, who now faces battery charges for the incident. There is also a warrant out for her arrest after she missed her first court date. When asked if parents should still trust his system, Linton said, "Yes," and that people should refer to his website as opposed to the one incident that took place. Funes-Lara is unsure, still looking back to the recording and reliving the traumatizing memories. She has now hired an attorney after saying the district should have protected her and her family. LAUSD would not provide someone to be interviewed for this story and only answered approximately 10% of the written questions KCAL submitted to the district. They did not respond to any questions about the attack on school property or address it directly. A district spokesperson also claims LA school police are now "fully staffed," but the union president says that is flatly false and that the number of police who are actually on patrol is down dramatically compared to previous years. Here is the statement from LAUSD: The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education has committed to implementing a Community Based Safety Pilot (CBSP) program to address concerns in the community about student safety. Safe Passage is one of the pilot initiatives included in the program approved by the Board in 2021. These CBSP efforts – alongside partnerships with law enforcement, governmental and community agencies – reflect the District's commitment to leverage all available resources to support student safety. Currently, 77 of our 1500+ schools take advantage of the Safe Passage program offerings by approximately 30 Safe Passage vendors. Los Angeles Unified continually conducts periodic assessments and monitoring of the Safe Passage pilot initiative to evaluate what is working well and what needs to be strengthened. Some recent actions taken in response to our ongoing assessment include: On December 16, 2024, Los Angeles Unified issued an updated Bulletin for vendors regarding criminal background compliance requirements (BUL-3872.1 Fingerprinting and Criminal Background Compliance for Contractors).* On February 26, 2025, we trained Principals on the new bulletin to ensure coherence. On May 30, updated guidance was disseminated to Regions. On June 2, 2025, additional guidance was disseminated to school administrators. As part of our ongoing review of all of our safety programs, on April 9, 2025, the Superintendent requested that a comprehensive review process of the current Safe Passage program be initiated, including a review of vendor contracts, their implementation, vendors' protocols for hiring, the training required by vendors for their employees, and the data-driven impact of these services on our communities. Our review is ongoing however, we can highlight the following: After a jump in incidents immediately following the pandemic, we are seeing improvement in the data regarding on-campus incidents Districtwide. Incident Report Type* July 01, 2019 - May 31, 2020** July 01, 2022 - May 31, 2023 July 01, 2023 - May 31, 2024 July 01, 2024 - May 31, 2025 Suicide Risk 5,641 9,384 9,218 8,461 Fighting/Physical Aggression 1,941 4,063 5,513 5,403 Threat 1,381 2,893 3,544 3,544 Illegal/Controlled Substance 688 1,541 1,786 1,735 Weapons 513 1,121 1,018 857 We are seeing improvements in our Student Experience Survey data, which is also reflected in a recent GPSN report. And we see improvements in data among those students in the 77 schools receiving Safe Passage services who report "I Feel Safe in the Neighborhood Around This School". Finally, Los Angeles Unified has filled all vacancies with the Los Angeles Unified Police Department and now employs a fully staffed department. *Please note that pursuant to Education Code Section 42125.1, and as required under the District's contracts with these vendors, any employee of contractor who interacts with pupils outside of the immediate supervision of a parent/guardian or school employee, is required to be fingerprinted for purposes of a background check conducted by the California Department of Justice. District contractors are required to provide a certification confirming that such employees have completed such a background check prior to engaging with any District students. *When appropriate, the District has taken action to terminate a vendor contract and, in the case of Manual Arts, a vendor immediately terminated the employment of the individual in question.
Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- Bloomberg
'Day of the Jackal' Author Frederick Forsyth Dies at 86
By Updated on Save LONDON (AP) — Frederick Forsyth, the British author of 'The Day of the Jackal" and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86. Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family.
