“We’ve had the Andrew Tate assembly,” a 16-year-old boy said with a smirk on his face and a perceptible roll of the eyes.

“What was the message?” I asked.

“That we shouldn’t watch him.”

“And….?”

“That was it, really.”

The Andrew Tate assembly is happening across the country. The one-size-fits-all solution to the manosphere and the struggles of young men. It has echoes of the old sex education mantra: “Just say ‘no’.” And it is probably equally ineffective.

Nervous school leaders feel they have to do something to show they are taking online harm seriously. And it’s easy to get spooked by the latest moral panic, with the irresponsible Netflix drama, Adolescence, the most high-profile recent example. As a former headteacher, I am well aware of the pressures.

For the past year, I’ve been travelling the country speaking to more than 700 16- to 18-year-olds in schools and colleges, listening hard to their views on democracy, politics, influencers, role models, social media and gender. I have been accompanied by Shuab Gamote, a youth mentor and researcher.

This week, we publish the findings in a report: Inside the Mind of a 16-year-old. [PDF download link].

Shutting down debate

What we discovered worried us. Less because of the views of young people, more because of the way teachers were shutting down debate.

One teacher explained what we know happens in schools: while there are many great citizenship and PSHE teachers, it is also the case that other subject teachers with slack on their timetable often have it filled up with these lessons.

They are often not trained or comfortable having in-depth conversations on difficult issues and steer clear of them. Teachers in other lessons - history, physics, English - are mostly just trying to get through the subject content.

Form time, tutor time or registration time in schools is usually 15 or 20 minutes and therefore too short for proper discussions.

Added to this, there are many teachers who, convinced by the “boys are being corrupted by Andrew Tate” narrative and unaware of what is really going on online, live in fear of the unknown.

As a consequence, boys who try to air their feelings often get closed down. It is a safety-first approach that means boys are not exposed to the counterarguments from girls (and other boys) and are instead forced to retreat online to their own echo chambers.

What struck us was that most boys had a sophistication to see through Andrew Tate and other influencers.

They were trying, without much guidance, to work through the perilous journey from boyhood to manhood and needed help and support, not condemnation. To be clear, the vast majority of boys are not being corrupted by online influencers.

They are, instead, trying to find a sense of purpose, a way of being, of self-improvement, in a world where the phrase most commonly thrown at them is “toxic masculinity”.

Distorted views

One boy at a school in Bristol reflected touchingly on his relationships compared with the girls. “All the girls in my class gave each other presents on their birthdays. I can’t remember the last time I gave a mate a present.”

What is also clear is that some boys have had their views of girls distorted by the increasingly blurred line between entertainment and pornography. Boys are now viewing models on their Instagram feed, but this is one click away from being linked to their porn channel.

Legislation is trying to deal with some of this; more will be needed. But, as with other difficult topics, the answer is not to avoid it but to bring it out in the open.

One example illustrates the point. In Sheffield, I spoke to a group of teenage girls, and every single one of them had received a “dick pic” on their phone, in some cases from boys who they thought were friends.

They felt violated and believed that this behaviour had become normalised, and adults just wanted to avoid talking about it. This is not good enough.

As we went around the country, it became instructive to watch the teachers observing our workshops.

For some, it was totally eye-opening. “We never hear them discuss these things.” “I never knew she had been exposed to that.” “I’ve never heard him articulate those views.” For others, it was a wake-up call to follow up with further sessions: “We need to counter that misconception.” “Those students need educating!”

The need for oracy

In recent years, there has been a laudable attempt to protect girls in school from sexualised or harassing behaviour. The result, because of the compliance culture and fear of Ofsted, is that teachers are too often shutting down conversations that might, in their eyes, become too controversial.

We noticed that after the workshops, the teachers would gather around and praise the students who had been “on message” - who had, in their view, given the more acceptable answers. Those who had strayed into more dangerous territory were not given similar treatment. Those cues are picked up by the students.

We cannot afford to be censorious as adults. Surely, more education, more discussion, and less judgement and condemnation are healthier approaches.

For many teachers, particularly young teachers, there is an urgent need for training in sensitive facilitation, and this rarely happens.

While we know some students may not want to talk openly at school, we also know that for some, it can be a vital space to talk about something that is causing anxiety.

I have been involved in oracy for more than a decade, and as one of the founders of Voice 21, the national oracy charity, I believe that every young person should become a skilled speaker and listener.

My travels around the country for this project have convinced me of this even more. Let’s be clear, schools are our last hope of bridging divides in an increasingly polarised society.

We need to model for young people how to respect a range of opinions and how to explore their attitudes and ideas as they are forming.

Explore and educate

As educators, we should never give in to moral panic.

Every day in our schools, we see how clever, sophisticated, curious, tolerant and generous young people can be. I saw this in every workshop we did, in every part of the country.

Our job is to listen to them deeply and give them the space to take those bumpy, complex, mistake-filled steps from childhood to adulthood.

It’s surely time to ditch the Andrew Tate assembly and start having proper discussions in school.

Inside the Mind of a 16-year-old, by Shuab Gamote and Peter Hyman, is published this week by the think tank Demos. Peter Hyman is the author of the substack Changing the Story, and was a headteacher, co-founder of School 21, School 360 and Voice 21 and was an adviser to Tony Blair and Keir Starmer

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