|
September
Where are all of the Male Teachers?
Walk into most any elementary school, and you'll
find the usual: There'll be lists of classroom
rules, crisp American flags, brightly colored name
tags in the shapes of lions, bears, and dinosaurs.
But unless you stumble across the janitor or gym
teacher, there's one species you're not likely to
confront: men.
While law enforcement, medicine, engineering,
and other professions have changed markedly in
their gender make-up since the 1960s, elementary
education remains a female citadel. Nationally,
only one in 10 grade-school teachers is male.
Interestingly, while school officials rightly
put resources toward recruiting and retaining
ethnic minorities, they do not do the same to bring
in men. And yet, a school without male teachers may
be just as detrimental to a child as one without
black, Hispanic, Asian, or other ethnic minorities
in the teaching ranks.
What's the potential damage? Listen to Mike
Carr, the director of human resources for my local
school system, in Lexington, Kentucky. When I asked
him recently why the county targets ethnic
minorities to fill teaching positions, he
responded: "It's good for (children) to see all
different kinds of people as role models."
In other words, schoolchildren, regardless of
their background, benefit from having a culturally
diverse array of teachers. The lives of minority
children are especially enhanced; they feel more
welcomed and understood in school, more comfortable
in the education culture.
The parallel with boys is clear. If there were
more male teachers, wouldn't boys naturally feel
more welcomed in the schools? Wouldn't they
understand more fully that education is as
important for them as it is for girls?
Last year, a friend's son started kindergarten
at a local public school. During the first week of
class, his female teacher routinely required the
boy and his classmates to sit quietly in their
seats, hands in lap - or lose privileges.
Not surprisingly, virtually all of the children
reprimanded were male. It's not surprising because
5-year-old boys are not designed to sit and stay;
rather, because of testosterone, they're chemically
engineered to be on the go. Michael Gurian, author
of The Wonder of Boys, puts it this way: "Boys tend
to use up far more space than girls."
Rather than trying to squelch this tendency,
Gurian and others say, teachers should be designing
their classes to accommodate it. Sadly, by the end
of the first week of my friend's son's class, a
handful of his most active classmates already were
being labeled as "the bad boys." (In an ironic
twist, children who disobeyed rules in this class
were not allowed to go out for recess, the only 15
minutes of the school day when intense physical
activity was encouraged.)
Certainly, there are female teachers who
understand "boy energy." And there are male
teachers who do not. But I can't help believing
that the presence of more men in the elementary
schools would generate interest and conversation
about the important differences in educating boys
and girls.
If boys were excelling in school, I suppose all
of this would be moot. But they're not. New
research shows that boys are more likely than girls
to be expelled or suspended from school, to drop
out before graduating high school, and to end their
education before college. While girls certainly
face obstacles in school, boys are the ones now
losing ground.
What can be done to attract more male teachers
to the grade schools? Not much, says Carr, the
Lexington, Ky., schools human resources director.
He told me that few men seem interested in the
starting salary he can offer: $25,600 a year.
For the long run, then, those of us who see the
value of men in the grade schools can advocate for
higher teacher salaries, which all teachers deserve
anyway. We can also support special recruitment and
retention efforts for male teachers. And we can
suggest that school officials take a look at such
books as Raising Cain, Real Boys, and The Wonder of
Boys, all of which present the latest research on
how boys learn.
While we wait for results, however, we fathers,
uncles, grandfathers, and other males are needed
where it counts - in the classroom. As this
academic year begins, we can go to our local
schools and offer ourselves as tutors, mentors,
advisers, consultants. Even if we do nothing more
than read a book to a class once a month, we'll
send the message - to both boys and girls - that
men care about their education, that we care about
them.
©2008, Neil
Chethik
* * *
For 20
years, Neil Chethik has made it his goal to find
out what men really think -- about family,
relationships, fathering, aging, sex, and more. He
is the author of two best-selling books,
Fatherloss
(Hyperion) and VoiceMale
(Simon & Schuster). He’s been a nationally
syndicated columnist, a big-hall speaker, and now,
the national media’s go-to guy for what men
really think about their everyday lives. Contact:
Neil Chethik, P.O. Box 8071, Lexington, KY 40533 or
859.361.1659 or E-Mail
or
www.NeilChethik.com
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
