Who Are We Becoming to Them?

In April, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson described the lack of male teachers in UK classrooms as a “defining issue of our time.” Her concern is part of a wider public debate around the behaviour and wellbeing of boys, particularly in relation to rising misogyny online and disengagement in schools. The proposed solution, echoed across policy commentary and the press, is straightforward: bring more men into teaching.

At a glance, the argument is appealing. Teenage boys in the UK are increasingly influenced by hyper-masculine online figures, and classroom behaviour data shows that boys are overrepresented in suspensions and exclusions. Only around a quarter of teachers are male, and in early years and primary settings, that figure drops below 15%. If male authority is what boys are gravitating toward, perhaps it should be recalibrated for good.

But while this logic appears sound, it carries assumptions that deserve closer inspection—and reveals a more complex problem than it first suggests.

There is no doubt that some young men are struggling. According to the Centre for Mental Health, one in four children aged 8 to 25 now faces a mental health difficulty, with boys increasingly expressing this through isolation, anger, or misogynistic behaviours. The University of Worcester’s 2025 blog on male role models points to the power of “everyday influencers”—teachers, coaches, and mentors who model respect, resilience, and accountability.

Yet the suggestion that male teachers alone are key to addressing this issue risks oversimplifying both the problem and the nature of influence itself. It quietly implies that boys are more likely to respect male authority and, therefore, that men are more credible conveyors of acceptable behaviour. In doing so, it unintentionally reinforces the very hierarchy it hopes to correct: that male voices carry more weight.

If we argue that only men can undo the harm done by other men, we risk embedding the idea that influence and legitimacy remain gendered currencies.

The rise in online misogyny is not occurring in a vacuum. UCL’s February 2024 study found that social media algorithms disproportionately amplify extremist content, including gendered hate. Young people are not only encountering these views; they are being guided toward them by design. Role models, in this environment, are curated as much as they are chosen.

At the same time, there is a cultural erosion taking place that no single teacher can reverse. A generation of children is being raised in a landscape that is more digitised, more performative, and more fractured than ever before. Stress is ambient. Competition is constant. Connection is intermittent. Childhood, as Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England recently put it in a Guardian article, is cracking at its foundations.

To suggest that the presence of more men in schools will repair this misses the point. The absence of role models is not the only gap. There is also a collapse in shared time, consistent values, and stable environments—both in and outside the home. And these are not failures attributable to one gender or one profession. They are the cumulative by-products of a broader societal acceleration.

The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” is often quoted, but rarely interrogated. What happens when that village no longer exists in any coherent form?

Today’s village is fragmented. Parents are overworked. Schools are under-resourced. Adults of every gender are caught in systems that prioritise performance over presence. And when these structures weaken, children don’t just fall through the cracks—they grow up shaped by them.

In this context, the question of who influences young people must expand. It cannot rest solely on teachers, or parents, or gendered role models. It must be asked more widely and answered more collectively.

So if not just parents, not just schools, not just men—then who?

Perhaps it is all of us.

The question is no longer who we place in front of our boys, but what we show them through how we listen, how we lead, and how we live. Misogyny is not a problem that will be solved by staffing quotas or soundbites. It is a cultural inheritance—and like all inheritances, it can only be changed by what we choose to pass on.

This is not a task for a single gender, generation, or profession. It is a task for a society willing to see itself not as the answer, but as part of the equation. And if that reflection is uncomfortable, it is only because we are finally getting close to the truth.