Lucy Marsh of Family Education Trust.
This article is retweeted, with thanks, from The Family Education Trust. Section headers added by Christian Comment. Illustration from “Pathways” video game.
145 MILLION VIEWS
The Netflix drama ‘Adolescence’ is once again in the news after winning multiple awards at the Golden Globes. Owen Cooper, who plays a key role in the series, became the second-youngest actor of all time to win a Golden Globe at the age of 16, as he received the award for Best Supporting Actor in a TV series. The series received four awards in total including Best Limited Series.The critical acclaim highlights the fact that Adolescence became the most-watched show on Netflix in first half of 2025, with a reported145 million views.
Renewed attention on the drama has once again shone a spotlight on the Government’s latest plans to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), which seek to address misogyny and abuse by “disrupting dangerous attitudes and stopping harmful behaviours escalating”. The proposed measures, announced in December 2025 by the Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips, include sending experts into schools to tutor children on “healthy and respectful relationships”, as part of an effort to integrate the strategy into every aspect of school life.
In her statement in parliament, Phillips said her goals were to prevent boys from becoming abusers in the first place by empowering teachers to “spot the warning signs of misogyny” and “challenge harmful attitudes and act before they escalate.” However, we believe the proposals risk demonising an entire generation of white boys and young men as inherently problematic, or “toxic”, while failing to acknowledge the risk that women and girls face from boys brought up in cultures where women are objectified and have less rights than men.
STATISTICS?
The strategy also needs to be careful with demographic claims in public debate. Such claims are often made confidently, but the underlying data can be partial and easily misinterpreted, so policy should be driven by robust official statistics and clear definitions. Foreign nationals accounted for a quarter of all “rape of a female over 16” convictions last year, despite them accounting for roughly just 10.9% of the population, according to research from the Centre for Migration Control.
COUNTER PRODUCTIVE
One of the most concerning aspects of the Government’s plans for tackling VAWG in schools is what will be regarded as “harmful attitudes”. On the back of the moral panic whipped up about Adolescence, the Government announced in March 2025 that it has funded an RHSE organisation called Tender to produce accompanying educational guides to be used alongside free access to the Netflix film.
Tender has an online ‘guide to misogyny’ which uses a ‘pyramid of sexual violence’ (see below) which implies that the beliefs and attitudes along the bottom of the pyramid will inevitably lead to the extreme behaviours at the top. In the guide, Tender claims that boys engaging in ‘strict gender roles’ or ‘bragging’ will lead to rape, murder and ultimately ‘genocide.’
If teachers follow this guidance, boys showing off to girls in the classroom or discussing a desire to provide for their future wife and children could be flagged as displaying problematic behaviour which could lead to them becoming violent sexual offenders. As outlined in our 2024 report on the teaching of so-called masculinity teaching in schools, Boys and the Burden of Labels which found that 3 in 10 schools teach that being masculine is problematic, teaching boys that they are ‘toxic’ just because they are male, is only going to drive boys further towards misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate.
The Government has not outlined any equivalent teaching about ‘toxic feminity’ or class discussions about ‘what it means to be a woman,’ despite the fact that girls can and do behave badly towards both boys and each other. Teenage girls are also significantly more at risk of online harm than boys, with more than three quarters experiencing cyberbullying and harassment.
Blaming young boys for all of society’s problems is going to create a negative backlash, as described by a headteacher in his article for the Huffington Post. ‘Research warns us against ‘negative social norming’, the risk that education unintentionally normalises the thing it is trying to eliminate. For those engaged in – even on the fringe of – bullying, misogyny and violence, watching Adolescence could positively reinforce those tendencies, while sending other students off in search of the very content the series warns about.’
THE PREVENT PROGRAMME
If the demonisation of boys through masculinity teaching wasn’t enough of a worry for parents, this week it’s been revealed that a Government-funded video game is telling children they could be reported to counter-terrorism authorities for questioning mass migration.
“Pathways” is an interactive programme aimed at school pupils aged 11 to 18, where players guide a white teenage character named “Charlie” through scenarios where they must avoid being flagged for “extreme right-wing ideology” after discussing migration online. Players go through various multiple choice questions to scenarios, where if they choose to engage with groups questioning preferential treatment for migrants, they received a red flag for spreading “harmful ideological messages”.
If children choose for “Charlie” to attend a protest opposing the “erosion of British values”, the character is nearly arrested and referred to Prevent for counselling and workshops by teachers. The game even frames researching immigration statistics online in a negative light. East Yorkshire councils developed Pathways with Government support amid local “concerns” about immigration and tensions over migrant hotels.
You can watch a full video of Pathways being played on YouTube.
SUMUGGLED-IN IDEOLOGY
We only have to look at the news to see that we are facing a global political crisis, with the very real prospect that the UK could be involved in another world war. In the event of military conscription, what kind of young men will be able to defend our country if every good masculine and patriotic trait has been hammered out of them in schools? This kind of negative indoctrination is likely to backfire on the Government when it needs to recruit more youngsters to fight for Britain!
Perhaps it’s time for compulsory viewings of World War Two films depicting real stories of chivalry, heroism and patriotism? They would certainly be more inspiring than depressing Netflix dramas and brainwashing computer games. Family Education Trust supports effective prevention of violence against women and girls, but we will continue to scrutinise programmes that smuggle ideology into safeguarding or that encourage teachers to view normal adolescent behaviour as a warning sign needing intervention.
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