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1,500 Teachers and Parents Sign Letter Opposing Starmer’s Plan to Show Adolescence in Schools

by Will Jones
5 April 2025 1:00 PM

Backlash against Keir Starmer’s plan to show the Netflix drama Adolescence in schools has grown after more than 1,500 teachers and parents signed a letter saying the series is not suitable as an educational resource. The Telegraph has more.

When Antoinette Keane – a teacher and the mother of two teenage boys – overheard her colleagues talking excitedly about playing the smash-hit Netflix drama Adolescence to pupils, she was alarmed.

Keane teaches English and has spent her career showing children how to sort fact from fiction and understand the concepts of bias and perspective. And yet, amid the breathless reactions to the show from the Prime Minister down, she believes a dangerous narrative is being spun that Adolescence has uncovered some sort of truth about boys.

The four-part drama follows Jamie Miller, a 13 year-old who is arrested for murdering a schoolmate, Katie, after he has been radicalised online. Over the course of the undeniably compelling series, we watch as police visit the local comprehensive, a psychologist evaluates Jamie in prison, and his parents cope with the devastating aftermath of his actions. Tens of millions of people have watched it worldwide – including Sir Keir Starmer, who has now decreed that it should be shown in schools around the country.

“As a piece of fiction it is very good,” says Keane, “but as the mother of white British teenage boys, I am very against the idea that it taps into some sort of universal experience of white British teenage boys – I live and work with them and can tell you that is simply not the case. If we show it in schools, we are saying we believe that this is who they are.”

For Keane, there are a number of further problems. Firstly, we are exclusively engaged in Jamie’s world, rather than Katie’s. “It is his story, his challenges, his family, his voice,” she says. “Her voice is erased – that was a creative choice they made, and in terms of art, it works very well, but it is a disaster as an educational resource.”

She also believes that a drama with a damning view of education probably shouldn’t be shown in schools. “In the second episode, there is only one competent teacher,” she says. “The others are putting on videos instead of teaching, while the well-meaning but ineffective head teacher doesn’t instil any confidence. Nobody stops or changes or guides pupil behaviour. Not only is this not fair – there are good, nurturing teachers everywhere – but if you show this in a school, you are undermining yourself as you do so. You are saying, ‘We are powerless’.”

Keane is far from alone. More than 1,500 teachers and parents have now signed a letter opposing Government plans to show Adolescence to children. It was written by doctoral researcher Jaimi Shrive and psychologist Jessica Taylor, who has worked in prisons and schools to teach people about consent through her initiative VictimFocus.

“As a drama, it is excellent,” says Taylor, who has two teenage children of her own. “I have spent such a long time working with police and prisons and the way they captured both the speed and chaos is really very skilled. But I absolutely do not think it should be used as an educational resource.”

For one, she believes that a school setting is not conducive to showing very young people a complex drama. “For the last 15 years I have delivered workshops on porn, violence and peer on peer abuse, from Year 7 to the end of sixth form college, and I have learnt that there will be children who are triggered, children who have switched off, or who are mocking it, and children who are invested in it. There might be a kid in that room or who laughs at another boy and calls him an incel. These are teenagers – and while this is often a defensive response, it has the potential to deeply harm anyone with some personal experience of these issues.”

Similarly, she believes that teachers are simply not equipped to deal with some of the questions that might be raised. “Teachers are not trained in this: they aren’t specialists in male violence or abuse and yet they would be expected to have very difficult reactions or discussions – it’s not fair on them or the children.”

Taylor argues that any books or films shown in schools usually go through a rigorous vetting process – hence her surprise at Starmer green-lighting Adolescence with no research at all. “I worked on cases when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS], and he was very evidence-based – but this response is not in any way evidence-based. He doesn’t strike me as the type of person to have jumped on a random bandwagon, and yet he has.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: AdolescenceChildrenEducationKeir StarmerNetflixPropagandaSchoolsTeenagers

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34 Comments
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Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
4 years ago

yes – because they died earlier in the year when their frail bodies could not take the vaccines

38
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
4 years ago
Reply to  Major Panic in the jabby jabbys

We Are The Petri Dish For A Dangerous Experimental Vaccine


https://rumble.com/vjr0lf-we-are-the-petri-dish-for-a-dangerous-experimental-vaccine.html

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.

Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group

http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

7
0
Hugh
Hugh
4 years ago
Reply to  Major Panic in the jabby jabbys

More deaths in the UK than France (with its (presumably) lower vaccine uptake) since December. I still want to know why

4
0
mojo
mojo
4 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

We know the jabs are killing people. We also know USA and UK need to be broken in order that DAVOS can take control of the West.

This is much wider than just coercing people into killing themselves

4
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
4 years ago
Reply to  mojo

The ‘racketeering and corruption’ that led to man-made Covid virus being unleashed
By
Neville Hodgkinson
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-racketeering-and-corruption-that-led-to-man-made-covid-virus-being-unleashed/

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

0
0
Cecil B
Cecil B
4 years ago

9484?

Prefix with a 1 and you have the original and the chosen title of Orwell’s book

Just saying

It’s all over now baby blue

Last edited 4 years ago by Cecil B
5
0
stewart
stewart
4 years ago

Great. More dry tinder to make the winter surge even scarier than they are already planning and scare everyone witless.

13
0
Freecumbria
Freecumbria
4 years ago

If you look at the ‘estimated total deaths 2021’ tab of the ONS spreadsheet with today’s release you can compare the estimated deaths occurring in each week with the 5 year average and produce this chart.

This helps to take out the bank holiday effects that affect some weeks.

We are currently running at 11.8% below average based on that. That’s the furthest week to the right on the chart. It looked like we were heading back to the 5 year average but it’s now trending below again for the past 3 weeks.

(while this uses ONS modelling, all the modelling really does is to assign which week a reported death has occurred in, so is reasonable to do modelling here)

13th-July-Deaths-vs-5-yr.jpg
Last edited 4 years ago by Freecumbria
5
0
NonCompliant
NonCompliant
4 years ago

For goodness sake Noah, the only deaths that now matter are those which happen within 28 days of a positive PCR test!

Don’t bother me with your ONS nonsense.

26
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
4 years ago

So we saved 3 months of 200,000 82 year olds lives by ruining 2 years for 70 million people.

SAGE should be stuffed.

40
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
4 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

Don’t you mean “SAGE should be chuffed?”

4
0
Hester
Hester
4 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

hanged more like

8
0
Meltonian1
Meltonian1
4 years ago
Reply to  Hester

There is no one to hang them.

0
0
Meltonian1
Meltonian1
4 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

There is no one to stuff them.

0
0
Monro
Monro
4 years ago

The five year average used isn’t the last five year average but a five year average including some of the lowest mortality years per million of population ever;

‘The average for 2015 to 2019 provides a comparison of the number of deaths expected per week in a usual (non-pandemic) year.’

If the correct last five year average was used, these latest figures would be even.further below the five year average.

The ONS changed its rules again.

Anyone who has had anything to do with government agencies over the last 20 years will know that they have long since lost any sense of perspective, any ability to take a frank look in the mirror.

Blair’s Britain: a democratic socialist state with a fascist health establishment.

Last edited 4 years ago by Monro
29
0
Freecumbria
Freecumbria
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Good point.

If you exclude 2020 because it is a high mortality year, then perhaps you should exclude 2019 also as it was an unusually low mortality year.

So even if there is perhaps an element of logic in excluding 2020 I agree the 5 year period chosen by ONS is distorting things.

Last edited 4 years ago by Freecumbria
6
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Freecumbria

Calculation (of all-cause mortality) on the basis of two-year periods (which allows for some smoothing ‘dry tinder’ and ‘higher mortality’ years) is very revealing – more so than a moving average.

If you look at the pattern, you will be even more reassured that nothing unusual is happening.

Last edited 4 years ago by RickH
3
0
Alec Bennett
Alec Bennett
4 years ago
Reply to  Freecumbria

The insistence throughout 2020 that the 2015-19 average was the only correct comparator destroys any reason to now exclude 2020.

2015-19 we’re all unusually low mortality years if you look at the historic trend.

What they’re doing now is tacitly admitting that the using the average of the previous 5 years as a comparator was a mistake. 5 years is clearly not long enough to establish a long term mortality trend. Any variation is going to look like a far larger data spike than it would if set within a longer context.

3
0
Freecumbria
Freecumbria
4 years ago

And deaths in hospitals in England and Wales are 15% below the 5 year average.

Clearly hospitals are under so much pressure that much less people are dying in them. Work that one out if you can.

The scary number of excess home deaths continues. These are likely to include some who have been denied NHS treatment and have died at home instead of being treated in hospital.

16
0
J4mes
J4mes
4 years ago

To date, 1,440 deaths from the ‘vaccine’, 1,037,376 adverse reactions.

//Those figures are voluntarily reported to a Yellow Card system which most people don’t even know exists.

Last edited 4 years ago by J4mes
27
0
Hopeless
Hopeless
4 years ago

Even if the ONS produced statistics showing that not a single person died in England and Wales in any week, or series of weeks, it would make sod-all difference. The stupid Government and its leader are as weak as water, the “Opposition” are even worse, and armies of vested interests, who have zero to lose from prolonging this outrage and everything to gain, will tub-thump their pro-lockdown and restrictions propaganda into the servile sheep that now make up a majority in these countries.

21
0
Steve-Devon
Steve-Devon
4 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

Indeed, back at the start of this hoo-haa the ONS weekly figure of registered deaths was regularly reported. And rightly so as, if you are doing Public Health properly, the weekly registered death figure is a key factor. However, we have now moved a long way from trying to do Public Health properly, as soon as they started to ignore this measure it was clear that there were more sinister and devious things going on.

2
0
BJs Brain is Missing
BJs Brain is Missing
4 years ago

I do not know of a single person who has died specifically of Covid. But I do know of people who have died very shortly after taking the experiemental gene therapy, or who have developed very serious ailments e.g. chronic nose bleeds, lesions on the brain etc.

Maybe we should start are own adverse reactions list in the comments pages? Especially as neither of the two ailments mentioned above were reported using the Yellow Card mechanism.

Last edited 4 years ago by BJs Brain is Missing
12
0
Freecumbria
Freecumbria
4 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

Emergency ambulance came into our street to pick up a neighbour who had a severe nose bleed a month ago. She’d never had nose bleeds before I’m told by another neighbour.

Would have been around the time of the second experimental vaccination but don’t know for sure that she ‘chose’ to be experimentally vaccinated.

Last edited 4 years ago by Freecumbria
5
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Freecumbria

I had a dose of the 1958 (real) epidemic. It was a nasty bug, and affected a much wider spectrum of the population. I also caught the 1965(?) virus.

Both had severe nose-bleeds as a late symptom. The 1958 one was particularly severe.

4
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago

Have we got records of cancer deaths anywhere, since this began, are they within the 5 year average, ditto, dementia……

2
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

There should be numbers. But cancer mortality effects of lockdown will probably peak later, given the later diagnoses (but not immediate fatalities).

2
0
CynicalRealist
CynicalRealist
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

The same might well happen with suicides as well, when the financial impact of all this really hits.

1
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago

The baseline is too short – and consequently misleading (and forget the useless term “excess deaths”).

The period used is one of anomaly – very low mortality. Take a reasonable (much longer inclusive baseline), and the absence of deaths is even more obvious.

3
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago

“… the link between cases and deaths has weakened substantially in recent weeks, thanks to the build up of population immunity.”

Population immunity is probably one factor, but the other likely factor is (contrary to the fear mythology), mutation causing less severity – the ususual pattern.

5
0
Hester
Hester
4 years ago

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good communist coup

4
0
WeAllFallDown
WeAllFallDown
4 years ago

There may be fewer deaths nationally, but it feels like there’s definitely more death locally. And everyone is sort of in a state of shock.

0
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago

One thing to note from the line diagram : the different shapes of the upsurges in 2020 and 2021.

The January 2021 is very interesting, with that rocket-like departure from trajectory after the start of the innoculation of a vulnerable population, and then the slower decline. (Compare it also with any other infection season peak)

No – it’s not proof, but it adds to my reasons of a decision not to touch the snake oil with a barge-pole.

7
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
4 years ago

We Are The Petri Dish For A Dangerous Experimental Vaccine

https://rumble.com/vjr0lf-we-are-the-petri-dish-for-a-dangerous-experimental-vaccine.html

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.

Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group

http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

2
0
yLivi.
yLivi.
4 years ago

2/3 of the Delta deaths are vaccinated, 46% of them 21 days after their 2nd dose
1/3 of total Delta cases are vaccinated
Vaccinated do transmit, get sick and die. Vaccines are already passe and dangerous.
Delta has a CFR of 0,2%, almost 10 times less than Alpha.
End of story.
Your PHE, pp. 11, 16, 17
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf

2
0
MikeAustin
MikeAustin
4 years ago

Let’s break this down by age. I compare with the population-adjusted figures for 2010-2019. Overall, we have been below average deaths since the beginning of March (dash-dot lines, right axis).
Looking at excess deaths (left axis), they have been insignificant since the beginning of the year for under 50s. The older the age group, the more significant the excess deaths are from the beginning of the year to the beginning of March. These deaths are more than balanced by reduced deaths after the beginning of March.
Up to the beginning of March, over 90% of care home residents had received their first jabs. Their jabs had been delayed a couple of weeks. The peak deaths in a ‘normal’ year appear around 8th January. In 2021, we see a peak in deaths in that age group that correlates with the jab programme. Had the jabs not been delayed, the peak would have been in sync with previous years and not so glaringly obvious.
Anyway, the long and short of it now is that, overall, we have been normal in terms of weekly deaths for four months, despite so-called ‘variants’ and ‘cases’. Indeed, we were ‘normal’ this time last year. There is no pandemic, no emergency and no need for restrictions of any kind. The jabs have had no net effect that is not accounted for by seasonal variations – apart from bringing forward some deaths in the older age groups.

ExcessDeathsByAge-20210713.jpg
4
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
4 years ago

Never let the truth spoil a good story.

0
0
mojo
mojo
4 years ago

When will the real reasons for this governments policies be reported and discussed. It’s all very well to print facts but everyone who has a connection to Westminster and the Government need to be lobbying for the truth to be discussed. I have yet to listen or watch one single press conference by Johnson, Witless or unbalanced. As for Michie …..why is a communist anywhere near Government policymaking?

The people of this country need to now stand up and ignore this Government. They may possible turn violent towards us. Biden is becoming deranged with the American people….not difficult I know. However, they are fighting back because they know the truth.

Johnson and his Democrat lackeys also know the truth. The full truth and still laugh at the voters. We need to start rattling cages and stop worrying about upsetting our ‘friends’ in Whitehall.

2
0
JohnK
JohnK
4 years ago

“the link between cases and deaths has weakened…” What a surprise. “alleged infections” might be a better term than “cases” in this context. It is a fake result of flawed techniques, to a large extent, is it not? Plus the possibility is that the real thing is less hazardous than advertised, as it were, to the vast majority.

Incidentally, having read the ONS report, you will know that from week 27 they are going to taper it down to some extent, so we’ll see what is in it then.

0
0
Meltonian1
Meltonian1
4 years ago

Try explaining this to the morons who constitute 95% of the population.

5
0
FarligGods
FarligGods
4 years ago
Reply to  Meltonian1

The concern is when you consider how stupid the average person is then realise that 50% of the population are more stupid…

2
0
Nobody2021
Nobody2021
4 years ago

Shhh,

People will start coming out and saying things like “see everything we’ve done has saved lives…”

0
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
4 years ago

The ‘racketeering and corruption’ that led to man-made Covid virus being unleashed
By
Neville Hodgkinson

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-racketeering-and-corruption-that-led-to-man-made-covid-virus-being-unleashed/

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

1
0

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