‘Competing with Andrew Tate’: Principal urges parents to teach respect to their kids - The Age

A private school principal who had to steer his students and their families through public fallout over a spreadsheet ranking female students’ appearances has told parents to do more to teach their children about online risks and behaviour.

Speaking at The Age’s Schools Summit on Thursday, Yarra Valley Grammar School principal Dr Mark Merry said schools were doing the right thing in teaching students about respect, diversity and dignity, but parents needed to pull their weight too.

Yarra Valley Grammar School principal Dr Mark Merry.Credit: Eddie Jim

“We are reliant on families to have some involvement in this area,” he told the audience. “We are competing with [controversial social media personality] Andrew Tate at home. That’s what we are up against.”

He also urged schools not to put their heads in the sand and think problems wouldn’t happen at their school.

“If there is a principal out there who thinks it’s not going on at their school – it is. It really is.”

In May, two boys were expelled from Yarra Valley Grammar, in Melbourne’s east, after producing a spreadsheet that used degrading language to rate female classmates’ appearances.

The students shared the spreadsheet of photos of their classmates to messaging app Discord, ranking them in categories including “wifeys”, “cuties”, “mid”, “object”, “get out” and then finally “unrapable”.

Merry said while he took the matter to police, he believed that if every school did the same, police would be overwhelmed.

Earlier this week, police arrested a boy after fake images of female students at Bacchus Marsh Grammar were shared on social media.

On Thursday, federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the spread of fake nude images of 50 female students in years 9 to 12 as terrifying.

“Not just as a parent, I think all Australians will see these kinds of developments and see them as worse than confronting. [They are] absolutely terrifying,” Chalmers told ABC News Breakfast.

Faces of the girls were used in images of nudes generated by artificial intelligence and shared on Instagram and Snapchat earlier this month.

Damian McKew, the foundation principal at Iona College Geelong, said societal challenges were constantly emerging for schools.

“You read on a day-to-day basis about AI. I didn’t know what deep AI was … until I read about it the other day. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, is that going to start impacting our schools?’ So you’re always on alert,” he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged on Thursday to raise the minimum age for social media users from 13 to 16 if the Coalition won the next election. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also suggested he may support the move.

However, speaking at the Schools Summit, Rosebud Secondary College principal Lisa Holt and Robert Pyers, executive principal in the Education Department’s school performance division, said the concept of a minimum age for engaging on social media was unlikely to prove effective.

“We’re dealing with a generation where that’s who they are,” Pyers said. “We need to educate students on how to use [social media] and how to behave.”

Merry said social media had “infused their lives already”, believing bans and age restrictions were unlikely to have any impact.

He said this generation was too clever to rely on bans, and laws and regulations should instead target social media platforms.

All three agreed there should be a public education campaign for parents.

“I think it’s a partnership and I think parents really need the support,” Holt told the audience.

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2024-06-13 09:45:37Z
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