Jo Walshe: St Kevins College principal explains why she recommends parents watch Netflix's Adolescence

Netflix's new four-part crime drama Adolescence has generated acclaim and positive reviews - and it's sparked discussions about online radicalisation and toxic masculinity.

The series deals with the fallout after a 13-year-old boy stabs a teenage girl to death - while addressing the factors that can warp young people's perspectives about the world around them.

St Kevins College principal Jo Walshe says this series is an 'important' piece of art.

"It's something that's going to stimulate an enormous amount of conversation, it's something that is probably going to get through to people in a way that's going to be a lot better than people like me standing up and telling families not to allow their young kids to have social media."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everyone is talking about this new Netflix series Adolescence. Have
you seen it? The four part series is about a
teenage boy who kills a teenage girl. And we're not
spoiling the series here, by the way by telling you
that this happens right at the start of the show.
It highlights the major issues for a generation growing up
basically being reared partly on social media. South Island's Saint

(00:23):
Kevin's College has done an unusual thing. They have recommended
that parents watch it. The principal is Joe Walsh and
she's with me now, good afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Why have you recommended people watch this?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Ah? Where do you start? I've recommended people watch it
because it's an incredibly important piece of art. I think
it's something that's going to stimulate an enormous amount of conversation.
HiT's something that is probably going to get through to
people in a way that's going to be a lot
better than people like me standing up and telling families

(01:02):
not to allow the young people to have social media.
That's really getting a nutshell.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's talking about boys in particular. It features Andrew Tait,
who's many people, many people say has some quite toxic
traits to his the way that he delivers his content online.
For people who don't know, is he quite influential with
young boys in.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Your experience, Yeah, he is, and he's not the only one.
They talk about the menosphere. So this is this idea
that there's this online community of young men who are
disenfranchised in the world. They lay a lot of the
blame for that at the feet of women, and there's
just this kind of culture about how you survive in

(01:48):
a world that doesn't want you because you're a man.
So you take it to the absolute extreme and you
become this sort of I don't know, I guess it's
the twenty first century of this urban men which where
you're just incredibly dominant. My daughter told me the other
day that she'd watched a video where a man was
telling young men on the internet how to dominantly order

(02:11):
a coffee. So yeah, it's definitely out the end, definitely
influencing people.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Why are boys being influenced by this? You know what
has changed that they are wanting to watch this content?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Well, I think one of the things that I pointed
to in my blog was the fact that there's thirty
percent of young men in New Zealand growing up without
a death or without any significant male role model, and
I think that BET has got to be having some
kind of an effect. I also think kids are entertaining themselves.

(02:47):
People give access to kids to social media and the
world of the internet without any real breaks or without
any real monitoring, So of course you're you're going to
look at all the things that you know you're not
supposed to, so that excess is just so incredibly easy.
And I think also a really important part of this
conversation is that young men I'm looking for something to

(03:10):
identify with and to identify themselves there, and I think
that perhaps we've taken a bit of that away from
them in the world today. I think we sort of
we talk about things like toxic masculinity, and you know,
we've had a discussion about this with our teachers at school,
and if you think about that phrase and the wrong way,
it's almost as if masculinity is toxic, and we actually

(03:33):
don't want that message going out to our kids. We
want how young men to feel proud of being a
young men, enjoy their physicality, enjoy those traditional male sports,
and not have to sort of be apologetic about that.
But I think there's been a bit of a shift
in recent years where we've sort of we've seen anything
that young men do or that they've traditionally done, as

(03:56):
somehow wrong because it's sexist towards women, and so we've
got this huge reaction going back the other way, and
I think that that's part of all of this as well.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Did we overcorrect post feminism?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Probably, yeah, probably, you know, we've we've we've got a
when we're talking about the equality of the sexes, we're
not talking about people being the same. You know, A
man's life is different from a woman's life. A men's outlook,
the way he experiences the world is different from a female.
And I think that that's fine, that that doesn't have

(04:29):
to be one or the other. We have to celebrate both,
and we have to celebrate them enjoying being whatever gender
they are in a way that's not relent on subjugating
the opposite gender. And I just think we're in a
really weird position right now in the world in terms
of how we think about all of that.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Joe, thank you very much for being with me. Joe,
whilst principal of Saint Kevin's College in the South Island
and talking about adolescents, the Netflix show that everyone's watching.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
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