3d ago

Many primary school kids will never have a male teacher, and experts say that's a problem

www.abc.net.au Many primary school kids will never have a male teacher, and experts say that's a problem

After never seeing primary school teaching as a career path, Ryan Brown now believes he's found his "calling", but he's one of just two male classroom teachers at his Canberra primary school.

Article suggests gender quotas and scholarships. Has anyone considered treating, and paying, teachers like the vital professionals they are?

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"Firstly, there is a large economic factor, and that is, on average and compared to women, men can earn more in other industries," Dr McGrath said.
"Second, there are social expectations around who belongs in the teaching profession — teaching is often associated with stereotypical traits of being caring and nurturing."
Pretty sure neither of these are the actual reason.
- I think money is a huge part of the reason. I never even considered a teaching career because teachers don't get paid enough.
  
  I wanted to be a teacher since I was 6 years old. My brother taught me so much growing up and I realized my peers didn't know as much. I got a lot of satisfaction from getting my friends - who were trouble makers - into doing well at school. I always got them to a comfort level where they could ask obviously dumb questions. I can't afford to trade that in, in this economy.
  Although, most people say the teachers who are idealistic like myself don't last. The ones that treat it like a job do.
- Because apparently men are not capable of being caring and nurturing.
  /s for the easily triggered people
  
  We are not allowed to be caring and nurturing. Any man that is, is often seen as "suspect".

A properly designed quota (mandatory minimum ratio, mandatory minimum qualifications, meaningful penalties, etc) should in theory drive up pay and treatment (increase pay to lure them in, improve treatment to prevent them walking).
But that is pretty unlikely to happen.

Interesting. My 5th grader has his first male teacher this year. My 5th grader also has Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), so it’ll be interesting to see how this works out for him. I’m rooting for them both.
The first time I had a male teacher (4th grader), he tried to mix fun/goofy with being serious, and I latched onto the fun/goody and rejected the serious. In fact, it was 4th grade when I lost interest in school completely and I barely scraped by as a consequence.
- Is PDA substantially different from Oppositional Defiance Disorder? Just based on the names they sound like exactly the same thing.
  
  I would say so. YMMV.

Quotas sounds not right. If there were quotas wouldn't there be equal representation?
It was a long time ago ( the 60s-70s) but I recall having 3 male teachers in primary school.
- It depends what the quota is. It could be a minimum percent. It could be a percent of people interviewed for the job.
- The first male teacher I had was when I moved overseas, in year 5, in the middle aughts. That's a 3% chance of happening if teachers had an equal gender representation, and were spread equally.
  Maybe it's gotten worse since the 60s. Maybe not. Some of this is obviously going to be random or depend on the specific school. 1% across all of primary school and preschool is low odds, but enough that it could definitely happen to enough students that you might expect to run into one of them in your lifetime. But if it were an even spread, you'd also expect to run into someone who had had all male teachers.

This isn't new. We had only one male elementary teacher in the early 80s.

This has been our experience since 2017. No male teachers until High School. The youngest kid has a ⅓ chance of getting the school's one male teacher in year 6 next year.
- I went to elementary school in the 1960s and '70s, and had only one male teacher then. I don't think it's a new phenomenon.

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