Bullying, says Gijs Korenblik (31) to his HAVO 4 class, has always existed. He sits down for his story, on a table at the front of the classroom. In primary school, groups 7 and 8, he was an easy target. He was insecure, cried when he had to give a speech and was not as “manly” as many boys in his class. So he got locked out, kicked off his bike.
The class is suddenly silent. Korenblik asks his students if they can guess what he did next when he was in junior high school.
“Bullyed others?”
“Yes, very good, Rohat! And why did I do that? I knew how bad it was to be bullied.”
“So that it doesn’t happen to you again?”
“Very good, Robin! I started bullying because I knew: then, by the way, I am safe.”
When you give a child his first bicycle, as a parent you don’t say: here, cycle to school. But that’s how it works with the mobile phone
Gijs Korenblik teaches social studies (and history) at Isendoorn College, a school for MAVO, HAVO and VWO in Warnsveld, in the municipality of Zutphen. On this early Friday morning, from the gray classroom you can see piles of snow on the flat roofs of the school building. Korenblik has just shown two scenes from the popular Netflix series on the digital board Adolescence. It was published last year and is about a thirteen-year-old English boy with misogynistic views, who is suspected of stabbing a girl from his class to death. He felt his masculinity was affected by her, because on social media she had called him ‘incel’ – which stands for involuntary celibacyor involuntarily celibate.
Teacher Gijs Korenblik
Photo Eric Brinkhorst
The series was not only critically acclaimed, but also woke up many adults who had not previously realized how deeply children can be sucked into online bubbles. Adolescence sparked a collective, concerned conversation about social media bullying and the ‘manosphere’. That is a collective name for parts of the internet in which influencers such as Andrew Tate promote heavy masculinity and criticize feminism.
Shortly after the release of Adolescence British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the series had deeply affected him and that he wanted it to be shown in “all schools”. The House of Representatives in the Netherlands also wanted this, and Sound & Vision developed a teaching package for secondary schools. Since this school year, teachers can use the cultural-historical institute’s teaching package for free. According to a spokesperson for Sound & Vision, there have already been more than six thousand “sessions” on the website of the institute in January. Adolescence-teaching materials.
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Filter trap on social media
Sound & Vision has been offering workshops in the field of “media literacy” for some time, says Helen Meijer, education & media education manager at the institute. Students and teachers can follow these on location in Hilversum. The relevant expertise for developing it Adolescencelesson package was already in house. “And we know our way around the media world.” It was therefore quickly arranged that Netflix made the series available.
According to Meijer, this kind of education is desperately needed. “When you give a child his first bicycle, as a parent you don’t say: here, cycle to school. But that’s how it works with the mobile phone. You can do cool things with both a bicycle and a telephone, but there are also quite a lot of dangers and you have to educate your children in that.” According to her, one of the telephone dangers is the “filter trap” on social media that you can end up in, such as the manosphere.
Talking about bullying is an important part of the lesson.
All students must put their heads on the table when Korenblik asks a question about a fragment.
Photos Eric Brinkhorst
Teachers can download ready-made lessons or ‘build’ their own lesson with the available materials. Gijs Korenblik chose the latter. He says he prefers to work “to the point“, with many examples that the children recognize from everyday life.
For example, he has a fragment from the Dutch dating show First Dates put into his class, that recently viral went. In the video, 21-year-old Davey says to his date Alanah: “You will never work more than I will work. I love working, plus you will never earn the money I will earn.” When Alanah asks why that is the case, Davey answers that he doesn’t think she has “those ambitions”, because she just wants “to have nice nails, nice make-up, nice woman.”
“I want everyone to put their heads on the table,” says Korenblik when the fragment is over. He always asks this of the children when he presents them with statements. The idea is that they will feel freer to give an honest answer if they don’t see which classmates do and don’t raise a hand.
“Raise your hand if you completely agreed with Davey’s ideas.” Korenblik looks around. None of the 25 hands go up. One boy raises his hand for “a little bit.” For the statement “He has good and bad points,” seven hands go up, mainly from boys. Most of the class completely disagrees with Davey.
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Male
Korenblik asks his students what they think masculinity is. What makes a man a man? Most guys come with a biological story and they say that a man should be respectful, decent. The girls especially believe that a man should see a woman as an equal. “They have to accept that women are the same.”
Then Korenblik turns to the boy who was the only one who “somewhat agreed” with Davey. The student says that a man is a man if he “isn’t gay.”
“What makes you think that?” asks Korenblik.
“I just think so,” says the boy. He looks sullen.
“Can you try to explain?”
“I just think if you are gay, you are not a real man, because you then fall for a man.”
“Okay, that’s possible. So in your eyes it makes a man less masculine if he falls for another man? Okay, you can find that. Have you written anything else that you think?”
“That he has to dare to do things and that… that he acts normally towards a woman.”
“But if a man is homosexual, is that allowed or would you rather not have that at all?”
“I’d rather not,” says the boy with a straight face.
The rest of the class giggles and chuckles.
“What makes you not want that?”
“I just think it’s gross.”
“You think it’s disgusting. But what if that person is happy that way?”
“Yes, then he should do that nicely.”
More laughter. Korenblik calls the laughers to silence.
Emojis sometimes have a completely different meaning for teenagers than for adults
The teacher deliberately does not correct the boy. Korenblik does not directly discuss the dangers of social media in his lesson. The murder in the series is not a topic of conversation; the series is just a conversation starter. That’s a good approach, thinks Freek Zwanenberg. He is director of the Youth & Media Bureau, which provides information and advice in the field of media education and literacy. “Of course you are on edge when, as an adult, you start talking to young people about social media. The biggest pitfall is to immediately start talking about the dangers.”
Gijs Korenblik lets the children draw emojis themselves in his lesson. They are also important in the series.
Photos eric brinkhorst
Zwanenberg therefore thinks that it would be too alarmist Adolescence to show to a class from start to finish. “That series is especially suitable as an eye-opener for adults. It is better to talk to children about how much they recognize certain elements from the series.” He points to the much-discussed ’emoji scene’: in it a son explains to his father that emojis sometimes have a completely different meaning for teenagers than for adults. For example, the bean emoji for young people would stand for ‘incel’.
Gijs Korenblik also uses that scene in his lesson, where he lets the children draw emojis themselves. They must write what they think it means. Pien has some explaining to do when she holds up her drawing of a doll with crosses for eyes. “Stab me,” it says underneath. She laughs. It wasn’t meant to be that grim. She uses the emoji when she doesn’t feel like doing something. “For example: I have to work later, stab me.”
The full names of the students are known to the editors.
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