Teachers in Britain are reportedly scrambling to educate themselves on how to tackle “rampant masculinity” and the popularity of Andrew Tate.
Courses aimed at educating teachers on how to combat ideas spread by online star Andrew Tate reportedly sold out last week, as progressive-minded educators struggle to prevent their male students from looking up to the influencer.
Tate — who is currently in prison on charges of being part of an organized crime group, human trafficking, and rape — has only seen his influence climb since his arrest at the hands of Romanian authorities late last year, with Tate and his supporters professing his innocence.
According to a report by The Times, many teachers in the UK are now trying to stamp out the online personality’s ideas from the classroom, with many going so far as to attend sold-out courses specially designed to help them combat the former MMA fighter’s ideas in the classroom.
At least some of these courses are reportedly done by Matt Pinkett, a progressive education guru who the paper reports as focusing on gender and the importance of fighting “rape culture” in the classroom by giving children “pornography education”.
“Sexual harassment in schools isn’t just a problem; it’s a catastrophe,” Pinkett reportedly writes in one of his books. “Inappropriate sexual behaviour and sexual language are the toxic foundations of a rape culture which towers dangerously above us.”
Such concerns surrounding the ideas held by today’s young men appear to be shared by many teachers attending these seminars, with one telling The Times that Andrew Tate has become “a personification of this rampant masculinity that’s existed in schools and been tolerated for years”.
The report that teachers in Britain are going so far as to attend sold-out courses on how to fight Andrew Tate’s ideas is only the latest example of the star’s rising influence, with multiple reports indicating his ideas are gaining traction amongst boys and young men in Britain and Ireland.
“A lot of the boys can see that there’s parts of Andrew Tate that they respect and admire, and then there’s parts that they don’t — they know that he says a lot of terrible things,” one teacher in Northern Ireland reportedly said regarding the situation, describing how a number of male children she teaches have been keen to defend the social media creator.
Others are reportedly attracted to his “dogma of hard work and hard exercise”, as well as his seemingly glamorous lifestyle involving supercars and numerous women.
However, the views of the former MMA fighter when it comes to women have prompted serious concern from many both in teaching and beyond, with the influencer alleged in the past to have beaten women.
A convert to Islam, which he describes as the “last true religion”, Tate’s alleged treatment of the opposite sex many now have landed him in prison, with authorities in Romania charging him with the allegations of rape, amongst a number of other offences.
Tate is now awaiting trial in prison on these charges, having repeatedly claimed that he is innocent and that he is the victim of corruption in the eastern European country.