Here is a problem that cannot be addressed or solved by a single policy approach, whether that approach is "affirmative action" or pay incentives, or bonus contracts for male teachers.
And the problem also cannot be reduced to the question of "social stigma" and "risk management"....it is much deeper and more complex than any of these, and all of these together.
Society has "dumbed-down" on men for decades. Television portrays male stereotypes as much worse than those portrayed in childrens' books as fumbling fools. (The Berenstain Bears, for example!) Many schools type them as angry, testosterone-inflated, gay-bashing, often bullying, easily bored and even more easily trouble-making creatures whose numbers top the lists of:
- school discipline and detention assignments
- ADHD diagnoses, even those by unqualified diagnosticians
- low grades
- lack of interest and apathy in class
- drop-outs
- use of and potential dependence on drugs and alcohol
- entanglements with the law
- membership in gangs
- gun violence
- high unemployment
The differences between male students and female students, in terms of how they learn, how they process information, how they interact with authority, how their bodies comport with long lessons, followed by 'seat-work' followed by a move to the next classroom....these factors are literally not included in the formal education of most faculties of education...and they need to be.
One of the most significant features of a young male's formation is that much of it comes from the attitudes of other males, older, and significant in the lives of those younger. And that "incubation" does not come from words, but from observing attitudes, especially the attitude to anything smacking of the feminine. Men, beginning with young boys, must separate from first their mothers, and then from the female cohort, or they believe they must, in order to develop their masculine character. It can almost be considered an act of "tribal ritual" and one that neither the society generally, nor the schools more particularly, honours, either formally or informally.
Conversely, young girls move closer to their mothers, their female peers and their female role models, without paying nearly as much attention to what the males in their lives are either doing or fostering.
Schools need, and parents must demand, an equal representation of male instructors, administrators, support staff in all schools, both elementary and secondary, because it is the parents, after all, who pay the taxes and cast the ballots that elect members of boards of education. Men, too, might begin considering offering their names as candidates for local school boards, if for no other reason than to bring some male presence to these debates.
Parents of male children, across the country, need to listen to the clarion call for balance between male and female educators in our schools, and we must begin with conferences, research papers, doctoral theses, and political debates that focus on the issue of male education in Canada.
And before another generation of male students is lost in the forest of the dark and sloping tunnel of avoidance, we must begin to address this issue.
It will take a whole town, or a whole village, or a whole city and certainly a whole province and a whole country to raise the next generation of male children.
National Post Editorial Board: Fight the stigma against male teachers
Editorial, National Post, February 20, 2013
The Toronto District School Board is taking a predictable but misguided approach to redressing the gender and ethnic imbalances amongst its teachers: affirmative action. “The first round of TDSB interviews will be granted to teachers candidates that meet one or more of the following criteria in addition to being an outstanding teacher: Male, racial minority, French, Music, Aboriginal,” reads a memo obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The superficial goal is admirable: Broadly speaking, a public education system ought to reflect the pupils, and the broader society, that it serves. And the TDSB, operating in one of the world’s most multicultural cities, lags behind. The board’s 2007 staff census found visible minority teachers, particularly East and South Asians, underrepresented compared to the city’s population — though their numbers are rising rapidly.
When it comes to male teachers, however, the numbers are not encouraging. In 2007, 67.7% of full-time TDSB teachers with six-to-10 years of experience were women; among those with five or fewer years, it was 72.3%. Nationwide figures tell a similar story: Just over a quarter of Canadian teachers are men, and they are even scarcer at the elementary level than at the secondary level. Nor do enrolment figures at teachers’ colleges suggest the problem will solve itself. Two years ago, just 14% of Nipissing University’s student teachers enrolled in the primary-junior division were male.
Of course, it is true that students of all kinds can flourish under teachers of all kinds, and it is important that they do. But children learn differently, and the more diverse the teaching staff, the more different approaches and attitudes will be brought to the classroom — and the better the chance any individual struggling student will be inspired. Studies suggest male teachers can be especially good role models for struggling male students, particularly those living without other male role models, who might otherwise come to see education as mainly a feminine pursuit. And Canada’s male students are indeed struggling, on many levels, compared to their female peers: in engagement and enjoyment, in literacy scores, in drop-out rates.
It would be one thing if the decline in interest among men in the teaching profession were a natural process. But clearly one culprit is an unnatural stigma against men taking a professional interest in children, especially young children. (As of 2007 there was a single male kindergarten teacher in the Niagara Catholic District School Board, which is responsible for nearly 15,000 elementary students.) The rarer such teachers become, the more this stigma will be enforced.
A 2010 study by professors at Nipissing, published in the McGill Journal of Education, found 13% (albeit of a small sample) of teachers had faced down false accusations of inappropriate contact with their students. “For male teachers, false accusations were a reality many had come to accept as a hazard of the profession, often accompanied by a sense of constant worry that infringed on their ability and willingness to respond as they naturally might to situations that present themselves every day in their classrooms,” the authors wrote. “This weariness restricted the male teacher’s ability to act in ways that they otherwise more naturally might; ways in which their female colleagues were free to act without suspicion.”
This is intolerable, and it is utterly pointless: Incidents of sexual abuse by teachers are vanishingly rare amongst teachers of both sexes. It makes about as much sense to view all teachers born on Tuesdays with suspicion as all men. Teachers and their unions, administrators, school boards, academics, parents and politicians should be fighting this stigma with the same ferocity that polite Canadian society directs at other forms of prejudice. Affirmative action puts the cart before the horse.
And affirmative action is inescapably unfair, no matter what group it benefits. Government entities inevitably deny it — the policy is “absolutely not to the exclusion of other groups,” a TDSB spokesman told the Globe — but it is literally impossible to give preference to a certain group without disadvantaging all others. The intended effect here is to ensure that all other things being equal, a black male teacher gets the job over a white female teacher. That’s discrimination, and if it happened in the other direction Canadians would howl in protest.
Canadian public schools should hire the best candidates for their jobs, just as every other government department should. In the meantime, they should get to work on what ought to be a huge priority: Making the education system more friendly to male students and male teachers alike.
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