Anti-Misogyny Classes in Schools Are a Good Start - But Nowhere Near Enough: Why Governments Must Invest In More Than Just 'Emotional Education'
In today’s rapidly evolving world, academic successes alone are no longer enough to prepare children and teenagers for the increasingly challenging world we live in. While foundational subjects like maths, science, and language remain essential, there's an obvious missing piece in our current education system: emotional education.
In March 2025, The Independent reported that schools across the UK will begin offering anti-misogyny classes in schools. Far from being an overreaction, the government proposed initiative is a necessary response to increasingly troubling cultural shifts taking place in schools and wider society.
Take, for example, the Netflix series Adolescence, starring Stephen Graham. It follows a teenage boy arrested for murdering a girl, having been radicalised by online incel content. Though fictional, the narrative reflects a disturbing reality for many people today: growing numbers of boys and young men are being drawn into digital spaces filled with misogyny, violence, and isolation.
Indeed, a recent April 2025 survey by NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union – paints a deeply concerning picture of the current school climate in the United Kingdom. Out of 5,800 teachers surveyed, 81% said student behaviour had worsened over the past year. One in five had been physically assaulted, punched or hit, by students. Even more disturbingly, over 60% of weapon-related threats originated from primary school children. These aren’t isolated incidents; they point to a wider systemic failure.
Verbal abuse is even more rampant: 95% of teachers reported rudeness from students, with more than a quarter facing verbal abuse multiple times a week. As Dr. Patrick Roach, General Secretary of NASUWT, starkly put it:
“We estimate as many as 30,000 violent incidents involving weapons occurred over the past year. Many educators are focused on surviving the school day rather than supporting students’ learning.”
In response to such a crisis, we have often heard and continue to hear, simplistic advice echoed in wider media commentary or popular culture that parents should "have a word with their sons." But I would argue that kind of response is no longer sufficient (and arguably nor has it ever been). If addressing these problems were as simple as a parental chat, we wouldn’t be staring down statistics like these.
The advice places undue responsibility on individual families, many of whom may not have the resources, awareness, or circumstances to intervene. It also neglects the fact that many children actually grow up in homes marked by neglect, or abuse, where they may be exposed to and shaped by ideologies like misogyny that we aim to confront. Indeed, with increasing access to the internet, children are increasingly vulnerable to harmful content and influences beyond the home, that their families themselves may not even be aware of the extent to which they are consuming.
According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, an estimated 2.3 million adults (1.6 million women and 712,000 men) experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024. Many children are therefore growing up witnessing patriarchal violence and emotional dysfunction in various aspects of their lives, whether that be through home dynamics, digital spaces or through their peers. So, the idea that he can simply educate young people out of misogyny raises serious questions.
While schools are, in theory, well-positioned to deliver emotional and gender-based education, we have to confront some harder truths, which begins by acknowledging that this education will not succeed without structural change, and that change must also begin with the government's own action.
I would argue that expecting teachers, many of whom are already overwhelmed, underpaid, and under-resourced to lead the charge on such complex, sensitive topics without robust training, funding, or institutional frameworks is both unrealistic and deeply unfair.
Teachers are also human beings shaped by their own experiences, biases, and limitations. Without clear, well-supported systems in place, we risk not only making no progress—but inadvertently reinforcing the very prejudices we're trying to dismantle.
Only a decade ago, I remember being in sixth form, being told to put my blazer back on during a sweltering summer’s day because “too much shoulder” might be distracting for the boys. Even at 16 I knew that this wasn’t about the uniform policy, but about control. About policing girls’ bodies while ignoring the long-term harm of such messaging. And it’s still happening. Today’s headlines still reveal schools enforcing dress codes that cast girls as distractions, while upholding an outdated moral code that places the burden of men’s behaviour on a woman’s modesty.
From a feminist standpoint, this isn't about skirt lengths or how many buttons are done up, it's about the ways patriarchal power is reinforced through institutional norms. When young girls are made to feel that their bodies are inherently inappropriate, they internalize shame. When boys witness this dynamic, they absorb a sense of entitlement, the idea that their comfort matters most, and that managing their impulses is a burden that girls are supposed to carry.
You can't condemn Andrew Tate’s blatant misogyny while upholding the very narratives and systems of control that enable it. We ask why boys don’t grasp patriarchy or consent, but how could they when the very institutions instructing them to “respect young girls and women” are the same ones enforcing rules that frame girls’ bodies as distractions?
There is no emotional education in blatant hypocrisy. There is no path to gender justice in a culture that shames and sexualises girls under the guise of ‘discipline’.
Even a school in Essex that recently paused a stricter dress code highlighted this wider issue when announcing by their own admission, that they were caught between “liberal wokeness” and “Victorian discipline.”
If we can’t even find consensus on whether girls can show their shoulders, and if we are still caught up on skirt lengths a decade later, what hope is there for delivering meaningful education about misogyny? The issue isn’t strictness versus leniency. It’s that the system still sees girls’ bodies as threats to be contained, rather than confronting the toxic norms doing the real harm.
Another slightly difficult but vital truth is that emotional education also relies on a government and state which permits emotional safety. Because this is bigger than schools. Misogyny is not an isolated social ill—it is nurtured and sustained by larger, interconnected systems of oppression. And these systems are not failing by accident. They are being maintained either by active policy or by political neglect.
I cannot help but feel baffled that after decades of austerity, of which we are still witnessing and watching children go hungry, seeing families buckle under financial strain, schools struggling to provide even the most basic support, and a healthcare system slowly being dismantled that we think that children have the emotional safety and foundations to even be receptive to receiving this kind of education. Their emotional foundations are already fractured.
At their annual conference, NASUWT teachers made something clear: the rise in misogyny and racism in schools isn’t coincidental. It’s being driven by far-right ideologies. But arguably, we must address that these ideologies flourish because of government failure, not in spite of it. When the social safety net collapses and communities are left with nothing, frustration becomes a tool, easily manipulated and often turned against the wrong people. We fabricate ‘enemies’; immigrants, refugees, and disabled people are cast as scapegoats, while the institutions truly responsible remain untouched. The anger many people feel is valid, but it’s been weaponized and misdirected.
I stood in Bristol once, watching anti-refugee protests unfold. What chilled me most wasn’t just the rhetoric, but the fact that children and young teenagers were also standing there, soaking it in. This is how hate sustains itself: not just through policy, but through culture, community, and silence.Hatred is passed down through generations.
So, let’s be honest. We cannot fix misogyny simply with some 20 minute PSHE slides. We cannot expect empathy to flourish in classrooms when the systems those classrooms exist within teach shame, control, and inequality.
Yes, we need emotional education. Desperately in fact. We need young people to learn about empathy, consent, identity, emotional regulation and to learn it in a way that is intersectional and honest about race, class, gender, and sexuality. But that cannot happen while schools are already struggling.
It cannot happen in a system that treats emotional wellbeing as an afterthought. If we are to take this seriously, emotional intelligence must be built into the curriculum with the same rigour as maths or science. It must be institutionalised, funded, protected, and embedded from the top down, not left to individual teachers to figure out in between marking and crowd control.
This is a national responsibility. And it starts with the government. Not with another speech about ‘respect’ or placing the burden of responsibility on teachers and parents. Real change will only come when the state stops shirking responsibility and begins actively creating the conditions for compassion, dignity, and justice to grow.
Until then, emotional education, no matter how well-intentioned, might not bring about the changes we so desperately need to see.
Written by Natalie Sherriff
