What else must your school ignore?

One man's toxic and harmful messages manage to reach a huge population of schoolboys in a country - via YouTube, social media, and other online channels. The messages cause harm. Teachers ask to be trained, guided, and/or equipped to counter the messaging. The government's advice? Do not engage. Do not discuss this. No help is coming.

This is not a blip on the radar, not an exception in an otherwise healthy system. A nation whose schools are too slow, fearful, obtuse and/or ignorant to react to Andrew Tate is going to be blindsided by a whole host of online threats - human and otherwise. It's also going to miss out on a whole host of online opportunities, failing to catch up to these, too. What else is your school not ready to discuss? Who else is best avoided - despite being ubiquitous, the moment school is out?

But wait, there's more. The scary undertone of this story is in the anecdotal evidence of just how potent Tate's bile really is. My bet is that 9 out of 10 teachers in 9 out of 10 schools in England fail to reach more than half of their pupils - with maths, with English, with just about anything - despite planning, trying, developing, and years of effort. Then, suddenly, along comes Tate, and boom... schoolboys lap it up, integrate it immediately, and do what they're told - en masse.