Intelligent, articulate and disciplined – that’s how secondary school teacher Charlotte Carson describes Andrew Tate, the online influencer who is a role model to many of the boys at her school in Belfast.How schools are tackling Andrew Tate’s influence.
Schools across the UK are encountering increasing numbers of pupils who admire Tate – and so teachers are having to work out how to respond.
Some are actively putting out guidance on how to talk about him, as part of a concerted attempt to tackle his influence.
Tate, a former kickboxer, has millions of online followers – despite being banned from sites including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for misogynistic comments.
He’s currently detained in Romania, alongside his brother Tristan, as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape which they both deny.
“A lot of the boys can see that there’s parts of Andrew Tate that they respect and admire, and then there’s parts that they don’t – they know that he says a lot of terrible things,” says Ms Carson, 46, who teaches Learning for Life and Work – Northern Ireland’s equivalent of PSHE in England’s schools.
“But also he’s glamorous, he’s good looking, he does lots of things that they think are cool.”
She gives the example of an image of Tate surrounded by flashy cars, while smoking a cigar – Ms Carson and fellow teachers find it a “joke”, almost a “cartoon” of “pathetic insecurity” – but some of her pupils want to defend everything he stands for.
One pupil told her they would still admire Tate if he was found guilty of the crimes he’s been accused of.How schools are tackling Andrew Tate’s influence.
“They said yes. They said: ‘Miss, if somebody in your family commits a crime, you still love them.'”
Ms Carson says the pupil eventually backtracked, and agreed they didn’t quite see Tate as family – but the kneejerk reaction perhaps shows the desire to protect his status.
“We all want to hold our icons up away from the dirt,” says Ms Carson, who founded a project in 2016 to help schools establish feminist societies.
Ms Carson will continue to challenge her pupils about the issues raised by Tate’s content, but says parents have a responsibility to educate their children too.
“Parents need to wake up to the fact that if they don’t teach their children about the world, then Andrew Tate will.”Tate has not responded to the BBC’s request for a comment.
