‘Trump Boys’ in New Zealand Classrooms.

By
Allan Alach
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35
721

Over recent articles I have highlighted how difficult teachers’ jobs were becoming, partly due to the ever increasing demands imposed by successive governments, and more so because of the very challenging behaviour problems exhibited by increasing numbers of students. This is a worrying reflection of our society’s intolerances, and of the influences of very negative and destructive social media.

This has impacted on schools, especially secondary schools where students have more access to social media. The linked article published by The Press newspaper makes for graphic reading. Unfortunately it is behind the paywall, but I will highlight significant sections for those of you who can’t access it. 

‘Trump boys’ in NZ classrooms: Teachers warn of rising student extremism

“Secondary school teachers in New Zealand are witnessing an alarming rise in extremism among students, with young men particularly susceptible to misogynistic ideologies promoted by figures like Andrew Tate.

Whether it’s young students strutting around as the “Trump boys”, or submitting social science assignments with ‘trad-wife’ (traditional wife) ideologies, secondary school teacher Paul Stevens said the issue has reached “a tipping point” in the past two years.

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Teachers now regularly encounter students who have been radicalised through algorithm-driven social media platforms – and some are leaving the profession because of it.”

Teenagers, as those who’ve experienced them will know, are hard enough to manage at the best of times, but this has taken things to a new level. Their lack of maturity, experience, and as result, lack of wisdom, makes them very vulnerable to influences, sadly often negative ones.

Over the past week the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) – secondary teachers union – held their annual conference in Christchurch. 

A report entitled “Responding to Extremism in the Classroom: Online Lies and Real World Harm”, was presented at the conference. 

“The recommendations in the report call on the Ministry of Education to support urgent action due to the rise of misinformation, disinformation, and xenophobia found in a “toxic online culture of masculinity”, posing an “escalating threat” to society, educators and students in Aotearoa.

When students use language or terms that are “dog whistles” from the “manosphere” – “this is misogyny, this is hate speech – and it shouldn’t be acceptable in our schools without being challenged,” Stevens said.

The manosphere is a term designating a variety of websites, blogs, and online forums that promote toxic masculinity, misogyny and opposition to feminism.”

This is serious stuff. I would also argue that there are significant adults in public positions in our country that are also contributing to this. I’m sure you can think of some names.

I would hope the Ministry of Education responds to this report; however if their past behaviours are any guide they will shift the problem on to Boards of Trustees and require them to develop policies to manage this situation. As PPTA member Paul Stevens said when presenting the report, establishing requirements for schools to teach media literacy would be a step in the right direction. 

“A PPTA member spoke at the conference on Tuesday about how young men at her school identified themselves as “Trump boys”.

Alongside students making arguments that even a few years ago “society would’ve utterly rejected” Stevens said they were all part of a broader movement which pushes back on feminism.

Some female students had also embraced ‘trad-wife’ ideologies that promoted limiting women’s roles to homemaking and child-rearing, Stevens said.

These ideologies appeared predominantly in year 9 students, which meant it was ”bound to get worse”, he said.”

Having not worked in secondary schools, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for all school staff to deal with this situation.

“The ongoing battle with misogyny faced by the predominantly female profession added another layer of pressure driving teachers away. Classroom experiences such as students using coded language from online subcultures or openly dismissing female teachers were “sometimes disguised, but increasingly undisguised”, Stevens said.

Some teachers are leaving the profession partly due to these challenges, following patterns seen in Australia and the UK, he said.”

If schools aren’t assisted in meaningful ways, other than the usual ‘toss the problem back to the schools’ approach of the Ministry of Education, the situation can only get worse.

However given Erica Stanford’s single minded focus on academic subjects in the proposed revamp of NCEA, I’m not hopeful. 

Notably, unlike nearly all of her predecessors as Minister of Education, Stanford declined the invitation to speak at the conference. 

This seems to be the norm for this government. Are we back on track yet?

 

35 COMMENTS

    • Of course you support Trump Nathan because you seem to be a Zionist fan boy. Trump is a now a raving fascist lunatic and Obama isn’t President, so wtf are you talking about.

        • By pulling out of WHO Trump’s move will kill millions who will die from preventable disease.
          His ego caused him to think he could call the shots on the Ukraine and many more will die now on both sides as he flip flops and looks silly. His change of direction on global warming will result in much dead and destruction of people all around the World

        • Gaza, you wilfully obtuse muppet. Trump continues to send endless streams of both financial and military aid to Israel, so they can continue to bomb and starve the Palestinians. The man supplying the means to slaughter, knowing what those means will be used for, is just as culpable as the man pulling the trigger. (And he has Morgan Ortagus obediently vetoing anything that might prevent the ongoing carnage.)

          If you’re going to be a contrarian troll, make at least a vague effort to not sound as though you’ve suffered a debilitating head injury.

    • Pointless nathan. You seem to swim in and out of lucidity. War is sapping all our brains, if you stop listening and watching the news but get most from reading it might be kinder to your head. It works for me. Here is imaginative experience:

      “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
      This quote is from the Queen in Through the Looking Glass.
      https://www.thoughtco.com/lewis-carroll-decoded-quotes-2832744
      Lewis Carroll apparently writes in a sort of code. Perhaps he could shift your mindset nathan and also some others, like working with a pinch bar to get moving.

    • Trump started no wars? Maybe not physical wars but he has created 100s of political wars internally and externally, you’ have to be politically illiterate to think otherwise.

  2. I’m glad some students have resisted the propaganda industrial complex that our education system has become. It means there’s a glimmer of hope for this country after all. What would you like to do with these dissidents, Allan? Send them off to reeducation camps?

    • No, I think Andrew Tate is as much British as American. But you’re right – his misogynistic, religious views align with your pedophile namesake.

  4. This is not about counting wars. It is about schools being empowered and supported to develop and address modern discourse n the classroom.

    As a teacher, I have long thought the curriculum has been restrictive and infantile Westernism. A stronger understanding of pluralist values, choice and life and death would have made for a more nuanced conversation and environment to deal with Covid – of course the classroom would have been too late to help the adult children that ponced around and persist with their Covid mania, at both ends of the spectrum.

    The language and swearing in class has to be addressed in some way. It is not always an expression of disrespect, it is the way they talk, and making it a problem is a barrier to engaging some studies and creating an adversarial attitude. Same with all this Trumpism/anti- whatever. When adults act like infantile children – any white/black thinking, but the ossification of the establishment and its inevitable polar counter part are both problems in their way – the children are not to blame, and yet it becomes teachers jobs to fix/deal/get slammed by it.

    As I said to a colleague, the public discourse is designed to create adult children, irresponsible and take nothing seriously. At the same time, school is the only place it is at all safe to be a rebel, whereas it is against power – government, the workplace and the capitalist powers that be – that need rebellion more than anything.

    We have a shitstorm coming of our own making. Like in Ukraine, or Palestine, the refusal to listen and constant doubling and tripling down by neoliberal power because they can will lead to a point of implosion. Who knows what will come when we pick up the pieces.

  7. So what happens when the ‘trad-wife’ ideologies that promoted limiting women’s roles to homemaking and child-rearing are from immigrant kids?

  9. Is it increasingly naughty children, or increasingly sensitive teachers? It would be helpful to have examples of the claimed extremism.

  10. Regardless of what you think of Tate, his advice for young men is spot on. Self discipline is the most important thing a young man can learn in life. If you don’t want to go to the gym, go to the gym. If you don’t want to do that 10 km run , fucking do it. If you don’t want to do 3 hours of mathematics study, do it. Tate is an antidote to all the woke shit that is driving young men away from the left

  11. In what world is interest in a trad wife role evidence of extremism? As well as being seriously deluded, this Paul Stevens dude shows he does not understand contemporary political dynamics. Business loves feminism (in the sense of getting women out into the workforce) as much as it loves mass immigration. Both factors keep wages down by increasing the supply of labour. And yet self-styled “progressives” like Stevens apparently think trad wives are a threat to society.

  12. If the teachers think the boys liking a milquetoast GOP politician like Trump is horrific, wait until they realise that the boys are also into Hitler and the Nazis. Heads will explode!

    I think it’s partially because the flaws and contradictions in post-60s progressive liberalism are now too pronounced to ignore and, closely related to this, having a “traditional” worldview and admiring the Nazis is the only truly subversive, anti-Establishment position a youth could adopt.

  13. We desperately need more male teachers.

    A lot of boys don’t have male role models or figures in their lives and male teachers used to full that role but post Peter Ellison witch hunt most would rather lick a toilet than get into the education sector.

    Education has become extremely female student focused and with no disrespect, the teachers are majority left wing and feminist.

    When you have no male role models, a mainstream culture that has spent a decade demonizing masculinity, a one size fits all education system more designed for female students and a culture that hates men, you go searching for male role models elsewhere.

    We need more male role models, not just on the left but in general.

    That’s gotta start with making education work for boys and girls and getting more male teachers.

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that young boys who have grown up during the metoo and for lack of a better term “woke” era of demonizing men and heteronormativity, are rebelling.

    I mean this with no disrespect because I love feminists, teachers and i am left wing but the problem is not going to be sold by feminist left wing female teachers because they are part of the culture that fed this anti masculinity bullshit of the last ten years.

    Demonizing these boys is only going to push them further into these nutters webs, we need positive good bloke role models to counter this manosphere bullshit.

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