As your children should be coming home and telling you about their work with tutors at the moment, here is a little bit of background and understanding surrounding The Working with Boys discussions happening in tutor periods for Removes – Thirds.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual violence in schools on the Everyone’s Invited website, schools have an increased responsibility to educate young people about the importance of forming healthy relationships, and to give them the tools to do so. We have recently introduced the Working with Boys programme to King’s, exploring this with Removes and Shells pupils in assemblies and tutor groups led by Mr Boyd.
The concept of Working with Boys is the brainwave of Andrew Hampton. Andrew is a former Independent Schools’ Headteacher and now delivers workshops on strategies he found useful in his time as a Headteacher. We first worked with Andrew to bring The Girls on Board programme into school and we have seen some very positive outcomes from that. Working with Boys is a positive, proactive strategy that acknowledges the importance of dignified, inclusive and respectful relationships between all pupils.
Working with Boys puts the focus on the characteristics that make boys endearing; we discuss that it’s OK to cry, have humour and demonstrate gentle, positive behaviours and we stress that this is what will help them develop healthy and mutually respectful relationships.
Above anything else, the programme consistently reinforces that boys’ attitudes towards each other and towards girls should always be courteous, civil and considerate.
One of our core school values is respect and it is essential that pupils understand that their words and actions towards each other now sow the seeds for their attitudes as adults.
We also discuss the explicit and implicit expectations that society places on men to behave in primitive ways; conquering, succeeding, fighting and showing off strength. In addition, men are discouraged from showing physical or emotional vulnerability.
In the context of the Working with Boys programme, we refer to this as toxic masculinity. This is an unfortunate phrase, coined in the 1980s, derived from studies on violent behaviour perpetrated by men.
Some boys have told us that this kind of language is offensive and they feel attacked. By only including boys in these sessions, we hope that we can dispel this myth.
We do understand that some of the language we use in the sessions could cause some boys to feel that we are getting at them. This is not our aim at all.
When we talk about toxic masculinity with pupils, it’s not intended to insult men and boys, or to imply that all men are bad or naturally violent. Instead, we use it to describe a form of poor behaviour that results when expectations of “what it means to be a man” go wrong.
It’s perhaps easy to think that societal portrayals of strong and powerful men being the norm don’t affect your child, but that’s sadly not true, and men acting tough and hiding emotions can be harmful to their mental health and have serious consequences. Sadly, suicide is the biggest killer of males under the age of 45.
In this way, as well as helping boys develop mutually respectful relationships with girls and with each other, the Working with Boys programme helps us to raise a society of boys that will talk about their problems and not see showing emotions as a weakness.
In our tutor sessions, we want pupils to understand that there is no one way to be a man or a woman - or any other gendered identity, for that matter - and give them the space to express their gender in ways that feel authentic and that show gentleness towards others. This is key to preventing child on child abuse in school. We constantly strive to create an environment in which pupils are happy and secure in their friendships, leading them to be well motivated to do their best in all areas of school life.
I would encourage parents to speak to their children about what we are discussing in school as we work together to reduce sexism, sexualised banter, micro-aggressions, sexual violence and bullying to zero.
We have been equally interested in the opinions of students. Groups of sixth formers were involved in initial discussions and are also used as role models in the sessions.
We have some excellent role model Sixth Formers who have volunteered to lead small group sessions and assemblies under the guidance of Mr Boyd.