Community Challenge: 

We need a Community's voices to help us identify and challenge bad ideas....

I was very grateful for the feedback to last week's monologue on unity and diversity. I allow myself the occasional space to share quite philosophical ideas justifying this approach with the following idea captured in this article heading 'Not sparing others the trouble of thinking'.  I also take on board feedback questioning the virtue of complex, unconnected or wordy monologues failing to have any impact on busy people. So, thank you if you tried to read it and apologies if this was not a priority for you.  

The idea I hoped to share was the importance of evidencing our beliefs so that we can effectively challenge or justify ideas and approaches. As some of you realised, there was a reason behind all the words: I have become increasingly concerned with the impact of social media personalities shaping the thinking of our students. I am even more concerned with some of the strategies I see employed to try and stop this influence.  Recently, I have seen News items, BBC articles, Questions in Parliament and even debates on Radio 2 about the personality Andrew Tate. He has also cropped up in conversation from two children at Little Green (this is not a Secondary School issue alone.) One approach to this influence has been to cancel and ban and attack the individual Andrew Tate. I think this is doomed to fail:  if you can remember your youth, it was these very personalities' 'counter culture' punk, goth, grunge etc. that appealed to a new generation. In cancelling, we make him more appealing whilst avoiding any effective challenge, discussion or debate about the ideas he shares. We need to help our children think for themselves. How can we do this if we don't know what they are talking about?

Andrew Tate is "Intelligent, articulate and disciplined - that's how secondary school teacher Charlotte Carson describes Andrew Tate, the online influencer who is a role model to many of the boys at her school in Belfast." See BBC article

I felt a professional responsibility to find out about this influence and have spent time watching a range of Youtube clips to understand his appeal. The truth is there are many things he says that can appear logical. It is when he weaves in wider prejudiced, over-simplified or sweeping generalisations that the potentially darker influence on young minds arises: the best place to hide a lie is within a truth.

It appears to me that the best way to challenge bad ideas is with good ideas. It appears to me that our community of adults is intelligent enough to do this - to challenge the bad ideas.

So, if you are up for a challenge...

1. Parents take a little time to watch some of the clips of Andrew Tate online.

2. Parents identify the good ideas and the bad ideas. 

3. Parents identify the counter argument or 'good ideas' to challenge any of the worrying ideas identified.  PLEASE ensure comments are professional and respectful as I plan to share these ideas next week. The aim is for us to create a logical bank of responses to help us, should we ever need to discuss this with a child or anyone negatively influenced. 

As I say, these conversations are happening across Secondary Schools; in playgrounds; across social media. The cat is out of the bag! So, putting our fingers in our ears will not prepare us for effective conversations with our children. We need to identify the good ideas to deal with the bad ones...

Anyway, that's my good/bad idea - a Community Digital Debate leading to a resource to support all of us with this specific challenge. Take a risk, I dare you!

If you are up for it - here is the Google Form with a link to one Andrew Tate clip and three simple questions to complete.