Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Not enough male teachers

Yet another in the stories calling for more men in education, particularly early on.

If you read some of the comments, they make the suggestion that there is an institutional bias against it, as well as social stigma, which is probably true. This presents a problem for male children because they have no same gender role models to show them how to learn. It may well explain the declining test scores for boys in recent years.

Compound the issue with the number of single parent female households and I think you have an unbalanced situation getting amplified at home and in the classroom.

In our own system, as I counted we have 1 man as an instructional assistant in the whole district Grades K-2 unless you count custodial staff. Go to grades 3-5 and we have 2.

When I went to school as a child we had more - I want to say at least 2-3 before grade 5 and that was in one school. As the article points out, traditionally there have been more male administrators but because of the paucity of representation in instruction that has been going down. It may have something to do with the obsession with child protection in recent years but it's really a shame if that's the case.

I think this is something that needs obvious improvement and I'd hope the district would seek out qualified male instructional staff to fill the gaps and provide more balance for our children.

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