Male Teachers A.W.O.L.?

TRURO NS- Further study into the number of male teachers could result in a specific strategy to increase the number of men educators locally.

Chignecto-Central Regional School Board officials are gathering data to compare the number of male to female teachers within CCRSB. Director of human resources services Allison McGrath said the reason is to see if long-term planning needs to be implemented to increase the number of male teachers.
"There's a sense that younger boys are not as engaged in school and maybe they need more male mentors. There seems to be a stigma about men going into elementary teaching," said McGrath. "It used to be that boys were really exceeding (compared to girls) but now it seems that's switched."
McGrath said recent data indicates 90 per cent of instructors at the elementary level within CCRSB are female. That figure is 70 per cent at middle schools and 65 per cent high in high schools.
Due to these findings, the school is looking at options to potentially devise a strategy to promote male teachers.
"It's a long-term issue and if the data shows we need to take affirmative action, we'll have to see what that would be," said McGrath. (From the Truro Nova Scotia Daily, June 10, 2010)
mchiasson@trurodaily.com

This is just a snap-shot of the national picture, where males are retiring from the teaching profession faster than they are being replaced by younger men.  Just review these figures from Truro:

• 90% female teachers in the elementary panel;
• 70% female teachers in middle schools, and
• 65% in high schools.

Those figures are not highlighted to level any hint of criticism at the females who are serving admirably in these positions. And there is certainly some preliminary research that indicates that boys in grades three and four seem to learn to read with greater confidence when they are taught by female teachers than when they are taught by male teachers. So this question of staff components by gender is not a simple one with simplistic answers.
There is a cultural phenomenon here. Just as young boys will and do comment, when asked what they think about people who read, "They need to get a life," as reported in the foreward of Dr. Chris Spence's book, "Creating a Literary Environment for Boys," so males who potentially might enter the teaching profession are turning elsewhere for their career choices. There is definitely a stigma attached to teaching for male candidates.
In Canada, there is also a significant phobia against any kind of "intense" response to anything in the culture. Even when we lose significant hockey games, we merely form a focussed group to have a wide-ranging conversation about possible avenues of remediation and turn Hockey Canada around, for the most part. So the word "panic" has been assigned to any kind of over-reaction to the question of increasing the number of male teachers in the classrooms across the country. We like to, in fact, we insist, on seeing ourselves as "cool," "rational," "level-headed," and "mature." And those in the political, academic and professional groups of the education establishment exemplify this "characteristic" in a platinum manner.
Intense responses, it is true, can and often do lead to misguided decisions, based as they sometimes are, on emotion, on a superficial grasp of the full reality of the complexity of the situation.
However, there is also a significant loss of potential intellectual octane, in many fields, if the numbers from the undergraduate and graduate schools in our universities continue to show females as successful learners, and males as much less successful, even, for many, dropping out long before their learning potential has been achieved.
Whether fortunately or not, this dynamic is something about which I feel passionately, even "intensely." A brief anecdote might be useful. A supervisor of my experience, a female, a former nun, retired nurse, and when I encountered her, a clergy, commented directly to me, "You are far to intense for me!" To which I responded, without missing a beat, " Well I am also too bald, so deal with it!"
The Canadian cultural mask of "maturity" is not one to which my biochemistry is well suited. In fact, about some issues, I am downright insensed. And the reason is that I know there are steps that can and ought to be taken by those responsible to make changes.

It was George Bernard Shaw who said, and Bobby Kennedy who repeated, "Some men see things as they are and ask, Why? While I see things as they might be and ask, 'Why not?'" Count me among the second group!