Disrupting Red Pill Thinking in Adolescence: The role of school history and why ‘mastery learning’ is taking us in the wrong direction

Matrix Pills (c) ThomasThomas CC BY-NC 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasthomas/258931782

The government have just announced that they are to make the Netflix series Adolescence free to show in all secondary schools. The move reflects a wider concern about the waves of disinformation and radicalisation flooding the lives of young people. Radicalisation of young people is not a new issue. When I began my career, I can remember concerns being raised about pupils being drawn into post-9/11 Islamic terrorism, as well as racist movements such as the English Defence League. Indeed, I had to raise concerns about pupils on the latter front more than once in my time in the classroom. More recently we have seen the concern over the rise in toxic masculinity, the influence of Andrew Tate and online Incel communities. 

What is common in almost all of these groups is that they seek to ‘red pill’ those who fall into their orbit. By this, I mean that, they try to show why the world as most people experience it is a lie and attempt to ‘awaken’ their victims with a new set of truths – the ‘red pill’. These ‘truths’ commonly play on a victim’s existing fears and prejudices, encouraging them to abandon the complexities of the real world in favour of the simplified ‘red pill’ narrative and its equally simplistic (and often violent) solutions. These new truths quickly become embedded through repetition and connection with a community of likeminded people. A sense of belonging is engendered and the truths become enmeshed with a person’s sense of self.

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