Schools must fight to save boys from ‘manosphere’, ex-principal says

A leading educator says more schools need to step up to the plate after Sydney private school Knox Grammar announced it would bring in experts to help teachers and parents fight the “manosphere”.

The “manosphere” is the loose collective term for online male influencers such as Andrew Tate, who critics say are fuelling a wave of misogyny in young men.

Experts say boys might feel disconnected in school or socially, and are lured in with a promise of community and self-esteem building, but the pipeline swiftly leads to more extreme attitudes and ideologies.

Former principal and Real Schools chief executive Adam Voigt told Today the announcement by Knox was a “positive first step”, but much work remained.

“These schools really need to own their part of the problem as well,” he said.

Voigt said boys from “elite” schools in the Knox category were overrepresented in exhibitions of misogynistic or even criminal behaviour.

“These schools sell a bit of a vision sometimes to families, and they these families pay a lot (for) future leaders, but they’re they’re actually producing boys that are not doing the right thing by women out there,” Voigt said.

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“I think it’s really clear that there’s a cultural issue with the boys that are emerging from these so-called elite but really exclusive schools.“

While these “elite” institutions might have more resources to bring in outside experts, Voigt said any school could and should take action.

“I see schools like Clarence High School in Tasmania, which has produced outstanding learning, but also citizenship results, schools, primary schools as well, that are doing a really terrific job of teaching boys in particular while they’re young, that they are very capable of empathy and compassion,” Voigt said.

“These are the important dispositions that lead to self-regulation of your own behaviour.

“And when we have parents and schools working together, the price tag doesn’t matter so much.”

Voigt also emphasised the importance of healthy male role models, whether it be a father, relative, or even a neighbour, to counter negative online influences.

“I think any time that we can also kind of talk to (boys) about this conversation ... I think also letting them know that we get it, that it’s hard,” he said.

“It’s hard to resist these forces.

“It’s hard to resist big group pressure when in a classroom or in a pub, this stuff can get normalised very easily.

“But hold the line, hold the line on standards, on what a good young man really is.”

Senior politicians including federal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan this week suggested schooling was failing young men.

Taylor, when asked about consent education, condemned what he described as the politicisation of teaching but said it was important to raise boys to be “good men”, while Canavan claimed education in Australia had been “feminised”.

But in emphasising the importance of healthy male role models, Voigt explicitly rejected the notion that women-dominated schools were to blame for the troubling behaviour of young men.

He said Canavan’s comments were the “greatest load of nonsense”.

“The idea that the curriculum in a school has become feminised is, is a cruel attack on the women in schools who are doing a terrific job holding this together,” Voigt said.

“They’re at the coalface and they’re at the front line of some of the abuse that these boys are providing.”