Some Impediments to Male Elementary Teachers

Race, Sexual Orientation, Culture and Male Teacher Role Models:
Will Any Teacher Do As Long As They Are Good?
By Dr. Douglas Gosse
This research paper was presented as part of the
Conference proceedings at EDGE Conference, St. John’s, NL, Oct. 16, 2009

BIOGRAPHY: Douglas Gosse is Director of the Northern Canadian Centre for Research in
Education & the Arts (NORCCREA) at Nipissing University and an Associate Professor in the
Faculty of Education. His research interest include men's studies, masculinities, queer theory, arts-based educational research (ABER), diversity, identity, male teachers, and teacher expectations. He is the author of Jackyta , a novel (2005) and editor of Breaking silences & exploring masculinities, A critical supplement to the novel Jackytar (2008). His website is located at: http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/douglasg/index.htm and he may be emailed:
douglasg@nipissingu.ca

Here are some interesting fragmentary pieces from a piece of research by Dr. David Gosse et al, the resources for which are listed below.

In Ontario, and similarly in most areas of Canada and the United States, men represent only one in
ten primary/junior teachers, and fewer than one in three secondary teachers (Bernard, Hill, Falter, & Wilson, 2004). In Canada, according to Statistics Canada (Staff, 2008a), the total of full time and part time teachers stands at 108,267 male and 267,788 female; There is also a majority of female administrators in education nationwide with 29,015 total of whom 13,680 are male and 15,335 female. Likewise, reports from teacher organizations in British Columbia (Staff, 2007/08), Prince Edward Island (MacRae, 2008), and New Brunswick (Robichaud, 2008) confirm both a preponderance of female teachers and administrators. This is contrary to persistent yet erroneous popular beliefs and publications regarding male dominance in educational administration. Consult, for instance, Coulter & McNay (1995) who base their assertions about male patriarchal administrative dominance in education on research from the 1980s, including Women and men in education: A national survey of gender distribution in school systems (Rees, 1990), as does Martino (2008b) citing Teachers: The culture and politics of work (Lawn & Grace, 1987), and an English context, thereby selectively ignoring current data that decries the implications of the lack of male teachers in England as role models for boys.1
Furthermore, research on men’s experiences in teaching is often framed in a discourse of “backlash” against women’s progress and equity (Martino, 2008b), and encapsulated in a supposed “myth” of the boy crisis (von Drehle, July 26, 2007). Such rhetoric is an attempt to silence research on boys and men, and maintain problematic yet widespread theories of patriarchal hegemony that permeate every aspect of society from media and popular culture to our educational, medical, and legal systems. Ultimately, there is passionate disagreement over the issue of engaging more male teachers.

Another fragment: In England, the number of male school teachers is running at a historic low of 13 per cent in primary schools and 41 per cent in secondary schools, with more than a quarter of primary schools not having a single male teacher, and nearly 5000 staffrooms populated solely by women (Clark, July 13, 200

After setting out both an abstract, and a methodology, Dr. Gosse and his team rely on on-line surveys and face-to-face interviews for their "raw" data, and apply some very unique lenses through which to view their responses.
For the lay person, the paper discloses some very sophisticated observations about the experience of male elementary teachers in Ontario including:

• a cultural bias of ideological feminists against anything male, including males themselves,
• a trend to placing "difficult" students in classrooms with male teachers, leaving all the "compliant" and conforming students in classrooms with female teachers, 
• a cultural phobia against male teachers with young children because of the "danger" of inappropriate sexual behaviour, a potential criticism not experienced by female teachers

For a PDF of the full paper, link to this e-address:

www.mun.ca/edge2009/displaypapers.php?id=61

Glossary:
Ideological feminism: Nathan & Young (2001) assert that ideological feminism presents all issues from the point of view of women and, in the process, explicitly or implicitly attacks men as a class.
(Gosse posits : ideological feminism is reductionist and infused with essentialist dogma
towards boys and men, even as paradoxically many ideological feminists challenge essentialist views of
girls and women.)
androgenophobia,  the prevalent societal conviction that maleness, the male
body, and male sexualities are somehow unclean, perverse, and menacing,
erastephobia,  a pervasive expectation and fear of impending pedophilia by males in general, and male teachers in the schools in particular, in ways and to a degree unlike female colleagues (Gosse, 2009).

ABSTRACT: There is a perceived shortage of males in education provincially and nationally in Canada, particularly at the primary and junior levels. Some barriers to males becoming teachers include the impression that teachers are overworked and underpaid, that men are less nurturing than women, and that it is inappropriate for men to be working with young children due to perception of their dangerous sexualities. Also, boys progressively score less well than girls on provincial, national, and international achievement tests in several areas, and some link this to the shortage of male role models in our schools. Ultimately, increasing numbers of researchers, teachers, administrators, and members of the public identify the need for more men to serve as role models, which has resulted in significant controversy. My theoretical framework derives from queer theory, questioning the fluidity of discourse and identities, and troubling accepted, commonplace beliefs, knowledge, and practices. To this end, I interpret data from an online survey of 223 male primary/junior school teachers in Ontario, Canada. The results are startling, and call into question some commonly accepted truths about male teachers as role models. In particular in this paper, I will critically address male primary-junior teachers as role models along the lines of race, sexual orientation, and culture, regarding two popular ideologies: firstly, that of good teachers who can supposedly teach all pupils regardless of their own identity markers, and sense of agency, or those of their pupils and larger communities, and secondly, notions of diversity to offset hegemonic male gender expectations, and to better reflect diversity in the broader school and social populations while
counterbalancing the overwhelming numbers of female role models in school and at home for children.

Resources for the  paper

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Bernard, J.-L., Hill, D., Falter, P., & Wilson, W. D. (2004). Narrowing the gender gap: Attracting
men to teaching. Toronto: Ontario College of Teachers.
Blom, M. (2007, July 14). Strategies for success: A toolbox for helping boys in school. Paper
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Brown, L. (2003, Wednesday, May 28). Ontario 13-year-old tops in reading test, but 16-year-olds
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Brown, L., Popplewell, B., & Staff. (2008, January 30). Board okays black-focussed schools.
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Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Clark, L. (July 13, 2009). Primary schools launch drive to recruit more male staff as only one in
eight teachers

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Bernard, J.-L., Hill, D., Falter, P., & Wilson, W. D. (2004). Narrowing the gender gap: Attracting
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Bouchard, P., St-Amant, J.-C., & Gagnon, C. (2000). Pratiques de masculinité à l’école
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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!

"Creating a Literary Environment for Boys," Dr. Chris Spence

The forward in Dr. Chris Spence's Book, Creating a Literary Environment for Boys
(Dr. Spence in the Director of Education for the Toronto District School Board.)

Jalen is a boy in Grade 4. When asked what he thinks about people
who read a lot, he says, “They need to get a life. I can think
of more fun things to do than to just sit there.” Ask him about
reading, and he adds, “I don’t like having to read for school.
When I get to choose, it’s all right, [but] I would only choose the
good stuff.”
When it comes to reading and writing, boys perform more
poorly than girls all across Canada. Similar statistics can be found
in over thirty other countries. In comparing boys and girls, boys
© say they are less committed to school.
© don’t read as many books.
© are more likely to be held back in school, suspended from
school, and drop out of school.
© are three times more likely to be in special education classes.
© are four times more likely to be diagnosed with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
© are more successful in committing suicide, even though more
girls make the attempt.
(Heyman, 2003)
These are quite alarming facts.
But are boys really poor learners? Is there not something we,
as educators and parents, can do to motivate more boys to
become successful students? Does the disproportion of at-risk
boys in the learning environment not say something about the
way they are taught? Children, I believe, are natural learners.
Given a chance, they will try to understand and use what we
teach them.
So where have we gone wrong? Why does an otherwise successful
boy like Jalen, who in every non-school aspect seems like
a successful individual, feel that he’s not getting “the good stuff ”
in school?
I was inspired to write this book by the birth of my son,
Jacob. I want to give him opportunities to learn that were lacking
when I was young. I want him to be part of a successful
learning environment where being a boy isn’t a handicap. I
believe the school system needs to address how it is educating
the young males of our society. There has certainly been enough
research to show that boys and girls learn differently. At the same
time, numerous studies have concluded that the school curriculum
and many teachers do not take these gender learning and
behavioural differences into account. What I offer to this discussion
comes from my experiences as a teacher and administrator. I
have taught, counselled, and mentored boys throughout my
career. And, of course, I was a boy once myself.
My parents were from Jamaica, but I was born in England.
There, soccer was my passion and the sports pages were my reading,
and my brother’s. Like so many young boys, we were more
interested in becoming sports heroes than in being the teachers’
favourites. I spent more time every evening reading the sports
pages to my parents than I did with the books my teachers wanted
me to read. My brother and I collected, organized, compared,
and traded sports cards. No one ever told us that we were learning
important literacy skills.
When I was 8 and my family moved to Canada, I discovered
Sports Illustrated in the local library and became an avid reader.
The magazine was the gift of choice for my brother and me. I
also discovered that I was very good at playing soccer. The game
brought meaning to my young life and gave me confidence to
become successful academically and socially. Eventually, I earned
an athletic scholarship to Simon Fraser University, starred as a
running back on the football team, and received a degree in
criminology. After graduation, I was drafted by the B.C. Lions of
the Canadian Football League. When an injury ended my career
three years later, I began working with young people in group
homes and detention and treatment centres. These experiences
eventually led me into teaching Grade 6. I spent many of my
teaching years in middle-school classrooms, and eventually
became a principal and superintendent.
I was just a typical boy. I preferred physical activity to sitting
and listening to adults. I wanted to read about real people doing
real things instead of made-up stories about imaginary people. I
wanted to be praised and accepted for who I was, not for who
other people expected me to be.
From my work with young offenders to my years as a
teacher, principal, and superintendent, I have always had the
desire to reach out to young people—especially boys—before
they become failures in the school system. I know from the
important part reading played in my early years that literacy is
key to their success. I also know that like so many boys, I had to
be physically motivated—not just intellectually stimulated—to
learn.
As educators, we strive to ensure that every student has an
equal opportunity to acquire learning skills and knowledge. We
know from years of research the influence of gender learning
styles and teaching methods. It’s time to put this research into
practice. Many boys learn differently than the majority of girls,
especially in the area of literacy. Let’s give these boys a chance to
succeed.

Scary statistics re. adolescent males and females

Seventy-five per cent of girls graduated from publicly funded high schools in Canada in 2006-’07, compared to 68 per cent of boys, according to Statistics Canada.
Nearly 61 per cent of degrees, diplomas and certificates from Canadian universities in 2007 were awarded to women “continuing a long-term trend in which female graduates outnumber their male counterparts and their proportion continues to increase,” says StatsCan. (These figures are found in Robert Cribb's story, Toronto Star, May 19, 2010)
In one Ontario public school system, according to a trustee on the board of that system, the ratio of female to male students in the "Gifted Student" Program is 95%:5%. In other words, if you are male in the secondary school system in that board, you are statistically "not gifted" since you will not fit the criteria for entry.
In 1996, researcher Diane Ravitch, summed up self-esteem research this way:
If there is a crisis in self-esteem, it is not among young women. Girls are doing very well indeed. Boys, in the meantime, are killing themselves and each other at alarming rates. If either sex is in trouble in our society, it is the males. (from A Fine Young Man, Michael Gurian, Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 1998, p.21)
(Gurian's stories and statistics come from the U.S. Much more research is needed to compile data about Canadian adolescent males. This could be one of the primary purposes and results of one or more Male Studies Programs.)
On page 11 of the same book, Michael Gurian, (who has a foundation in the northwest U.S. dedicated the nurturing boys and men) writes:
Statistics and stories about our homicidal adolescent males are dramatic enough to garner most of the headlines: the fourteen-year-old in Mississippi who killed two children and wounded seven; the fouteen-year-old in Kentucky who shot three dead; the thirteen-year-old in Washington who opened fire in his school and killed three; the elevel-and thirteen-year-olds who killed five in Jonesboro, Arkansas. (Statistics in Canada would not be as high as these.)
Gurian continues: But they don't describe the whole picture. It seems impossible for us to fully comprehend the state of male adolescence in our culture, yet it is essential we do so. There is hardly any social or personal health indicator in which adolescent boys do not show the lion's share of risk today. Decades ago, our females suffered more in more high-risk areas, and now our adolescent males are suffering privation we have not fully understood...
(Here are some statistic Gurian lays out)
Adolescent boys are significantly more likely than adolescent girls to die before the age of eighteen, not just from violent causes but also from accidental death and disease.
Adolescent boys are significantly more likely than adolescent girls to die at the hands of their caregivers. Two out of three juveniles killed at the hands of their parents or stepparents are male.
Adolescent boys are fifteen times as likely as peer females to be victims of violent crime.
One-third of adolescent male student nationwide (U.S.) carry a gun or other weapon to school.
Gunshot wounds are now (1998) the second leading cause of accidental death among ten-to fourteen-year-old males.
Adolescent boys are four times more likely than adolescent girls to be diagnosed as emotionally disturbed.
The majority of juvenile mental patients nationwide are male. Depending on the state, most often between two-thirds and three-fourths of patients at juvenile mental facilities are male.
Most of the deadliest and longest lasting mental problems experienced by children are experienced by adolescent males. For example, there are six male adolescent schizophrenics for every one female. Adolescent autistic males outnumber females two to one.
Adolescent males significantly outnumber females in diagnoses of most conduct disorders, thought disorders and brain disorders.
The majority of adolescent alcoholics and drug addicts are males.
(According to Terrence Real, a Cambridge MA psychotherapist):
Although females are popularly considered to suffer more depression than males, in fact it is "overt depression" that our adolescent females experience two to four times more often than males. "Covert depression" --evidenced in drug and alcohol use, criminal activity, avoidance of intimacy and isolation from others, especially families-brings the male-female depression ratio at least to par. Real makes another important observation: Depression in males has often been overlooked because we don't recognize the male's way of being depressed. We measure depression by the female's model of overt depression. She talks about suicide, expresses feelings of worthlessness, shows her fatigue. Unaware of the male's less expressive, more stoic way of being, we miss the young depressed man, who in a town in Washington, walked into his high-school and opened fire on his classroom, killing his classmates.
More statistics: (U.S. based)
Adolescent males are four times more likely than adolescent females to commit suicide. Suicide success statistics (death actually occurs) for adolescent males are rising; for females they are not rising.
One of the most important findings of youth suicide studies is that adolescent males seem to have so much more trouble than their female peers in reaching out for help when they are in deep trouble, except through violence against others, society or self.
ADHD is almost exclusively a male malady. One out of six adolescents iagnosed with ADHD is female.
ADHD is one of the reasons for the high rate of adolescent male vehicle accidents and fatalities.
One in five males has been sexually abused by the age of eighteen.
Most sexual offenders are hetersexual males who have been physically and/or sexually abused as boys themselves. (Adolescent females suffer at a higher rate: at least one in four.) However, male sexual abuse has only recently been studied and some researchers have found that as many as two out of five male children are sexually abused-comparable to the rate of female sexual abuse.
A sexually abused adolescent male is more likely than his female counterpart to act out against someone else, generally someone younger and weaker than himself, through rape, physical violence and sexual molestation.
Adolescent boys are twice as likely as adolescent girls to be diagnosed as learning disabled.
Two-thirds of high school special education and handicapped students are male.
Adolescent male learning disabilities are more intractable, on average, than those of adolescent females.
Adolescent males drop out of high school at four times the rate of adolescent females (including the females who drop out to have babies.)
Adolescent males are significantly more likely than adolescent females to be left back a grade.
Fewer boys than girls now study advanced algebra and geometry, about the same number study trigonometry and calculus, and more girls than boys study chemistry.
Adolescent males are outscored by adolescent females by twelve points in reading and by seventeen points in writing.
Grade eight girls are twice as likely as grade eight boys to aspire to a professional, business or managerial career. (Gurian, p.11-16)

Male Studies Needed Now

Search the University of Toronto faculty for experts on the study of women and you’ll find more than 40 academics with research interests including “women’s mental health,” “women and religion” and even “women’s fast pitch.”
Conduct the identical search for “men” as a research topic and discover two lonely academics, both of whom specialize in gay men.
Of the genders, it seems feminine distinctions have become overwhelmingly more fascinating to the academe.
Witness the well-entrenched women’s studies departments in universities across Canada and the United States — important academic centres of inquiry that have provided a steady pulse for the feminist movement.
Now have a look for men’s studies programs.
Or, don’t bother.
I looked.
As far as anyone in the field can tell, there’s only one in North America, located at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y. which offers a minor in the field.
Add to that barren ground an array of individual, off-the-radar courses here and there, usually located in women’s or “gender studies” departments.
It all amounts to male myopia in the ivory tower in which boys and men are studied through a distinctly feminist prism, says a group of North American academics who are taking their grievances public.
“The landscape has essentially been controlled by women’s studies,” says Dr. Lionel Tiger, a Canadian professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Men’s studies are a branch plant phenomenon when, and where, they exist.”
The overpowering orthodoxy of men’s studies is that if you’re male, you’re bad or in need of remedy, says Tiger, a native Montrealer who taught at the University of British Columbia for five years.
“The courses are structured in order to try to make boys not boys, that is, to turn them into well socialized non-male creatures.”
The repercussions of all this are troubling and increasingly evident say researchers, citing poor performance of boys in school and higher university graduation rates for women.
Seventy-five per cent of girls graduated from publicly funded high schools in Canada in 2006-’07, compared to 68 per cent of boys, according to Statistics Canada.
Nearly 61 per cent of degrees, diplomas and certificates from Canadian universities in 2007 were awarded to women “continuing a long-term trend in which female graduates outnumber their male counterparts and their proportion continues to increase,” says StatsCan.
In desperate times, some American academics are proposing a schism in the already low-profile men’s studies discipline that would give birth to a bolder, less guilt-inducing approach dubbed “male studies.”
The Foundation for Male Studies proposes a conference and a journal as well as full major university programs that encompass history, sociology, anthropology, psychology and literature among other disciplines.
(Robert Cribb, Toronto Star, May 19, 2010)

This is a major development, among men. And let's not get into a game of blaming what has been going on in Women's Studies for the lack of such a program in Men's Studies.
It is a significant sign of the differences between men and women that women would seek ALL available avenues, including building coalitions, for the purpose of making themselves aware of their fullest potential and its expression.
Men, on the other hand, virtually refuse even to look introspectively at themsevles. And certainly not as a political, social, academic or cultural movement. Consequently, it would have been, and maybe still is, difficult to find men willing to state the obvious: that men are living in the dark about their own "inner lives" while women have taken the lead in their own self-discovery.
Whether that is "getting along" or "not" I find some men who are interested in men's issues falling into the model outlined by women's studies leaders, including an emphasis on therapy, counselling and when one expresses a view, held and advocated by James Hillman, that we have had thirty years of therapy and are no further ahead, those same men are irate.
Frightened men will never develop academic programs to enlighten men!
And it is frightened men, frightened that they are not as emotionally endowed as women, frightened that they are not as psychically and spiritually evolved as women that are blocking this movement from emerging.
This is not a competition for who gets to the end of the race faster.
It is a common goal, with very different perspectives on the goaland very different persepctives on how to get there. And both perspectives are, or ought to be valid.

Brief Bibliography on Men's Issues

Here is a brief bibliography on Men's Issues from the Kingston Public Library. No doubt there are many more.


1)Man Overboard (True Adventures with North American Men) by Ian Brown, Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, Toronto, 1993

2)Up from Here, Reclaiming the Male Spirit, by Iyanla Vanzant, Harper Collins, 1996

3)The Masculine Mystique, The politics of Masculinity by Andrew Kimbrell, Ballantyne Books, New York, 1995

4)Spreading Misandry, The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001

5)Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide, Maureen Dowd, Berkley Books, New York, 2006

6)The Other Half of Gender, Men’s Issues in Development, Edited by Ian Bannon and Maria C. Correia, The World Bank, 2006

7)The Decline of Males, Lionel Tiger, Golden Books, New York, 1999

8)Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man, Susan Faludi, William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York, 1999

9)The Wonder of Boys, Michael Gurian, Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 1997

10)A Fine Young Man, Michael Gurian, Tarcher/Putnam, New York,

11)Real Boys, William Pollack, Owl Books, Henry Holt and Company, Inc. New York, 1998

12)The Soul’s Code, James Hillman

13)Revisioning Psychology, James Hillman

14)The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Poems for Men, Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade, Harper Collins, New York, 1992

Call for Research into Male Education in Canada

Call to Research and to Inspire Males to learn, grow and become the best partners
Some basic questions requiring detailed research:
What is the current enrolment in Canadian medical schools, by gender?
What is the current enrolment in Canadian Faculties of Education, by gender?
What is the current enrolment in Psychology departments, in Canadian universities, by gender?
What is the current enrolmeent in Social Work, in Canadian universities, by gender?
What is the current enrolment in Canadian Veterinary Colleges, by gender?
And why are these questions so important? It is apparent that the next twenty or thirty years will witness a deep imbalance, showing a significantly lower number of male candidates in the above schools. We already know that large animals will have a hard time finding a veterinarian when they need one, because most graduates are female, and refuse to work on farm animals.
Will the same situation exist for young boys in both elementary and secondary schools? Why is there not an active public, financially supported recruitment program to recruit male students for these programs, in all Canadian provinces and territories, especially for the Faculties of Education since male teachers, one would assume, could have a significant impact on boys' decisions to remain in school, and to proceed to post-secondary education.
What is being done, currently, to the curricula being offered by those same Faculties of Education, to educate their prospective teachers about the needs of boys in the classroom?
What, for example, is being done to research and to design curriculum that will achieve the goal of increasing literarcy rates among male students in both elementary and secondary schools, so that those boys will have a wider range of options from which to choose when they enter post-secondary schools?
Is it time for public universities and colleges in Canada to being to consider a program of "affirmative action" in order to engender more applications from male students, and to consider curricular options that will enhance the likelihood of success of those they do attract?

Having taught English Compostion and Literature for nearly a quarter century in Ontario private and public schools, I am deeply aware of the difficulty of "turning on" male adolescents to the mysteries and the wonder of the human imagination as we find it in novels, plays, poems and short stories. Most young men believe, (not think, or speculate or feel, but believe) that such subjects are "for girls" because they concern themselves with matters of emotion and the heart. This truth does not change when those males become husbands and fathers, and if those same men wish to have an option of whether to see a male or a female physician, or a male or female counsellor, or Social Worker...it is time for them to take up some responsibility for bringing literacy to the forefront of their young male children.
Social intelligence, and communications skills are at the centre of the economic life of North American for the foreseeable future, and boys are just as capable as girls of filling the jobs and careers that specifically require those skills. We may do it differently; we may use different vocabularly, and read different books, and watch different movies and plays, and read different poems, but there is no reason why boys cannot grasp both the literal and the symbolic meanings of the writers' chosen words, or his/her brush strokes on the canvas, or his director's notes for the actors in a film.
We humans must not permit the mind-set of the society to be reduced to a definition of a male as a "paycheck" or a mere function, as in construction worker, or electronic engineer.... serving the needs of the "mother corporation".
Males and females, both, are the repository of all things aesthetic, and all things spiritual and all things of the heart, and when women start to obssess about their specific piece of real estate, rather than their marriage and their family, it is partly because they do not find their male partner to be "listening" or "present" or "compassionate" or "empathic" or "interested" in things of the heart/spirit/imagination...or willing to converse about those life issues.
And if men either deliberately or by default give up on these various, over-lapping capacities, and characteristics, then our children and grandchildren will indeed begin to wonder, "Where have all the men really gone?"

Launch of Canadian Journal of Male Education (c)*

The purposes of this "e-journal" are

1. to conduct original research into the education of males globally, starting with Canada,
2. to conduct secondary research into the various research projects focussing on male education in Canada and globally
3. to generate, foster and  enhance the dialogue about the education of males in all countries and cultures
4. to promote the issues inherent in best practices in male education
5. to educate interested learners in the issues of male education, including its history, failures, successes, pedagogies, philosophies, sociologies, politics, ethics, and budgeting proposals
6. to raise funds from public and private sources to enable the above purposes to be accomplished

Whereas, it is clear that male students in elementary, secondary and post-secondary educational institutions in North America are achieving below their potential, individually, and collectively;
And whereas there are currently no specific courses in Male Studies in any colleges or universities in North America, with few minor exceptions, some as adjuncts of Female Studies Departments;
And whereas the public discourse about issues in male education at all levels is limited at best, at worse, non-existent,
And whereas the universities in North America have seen a dramatic shift in gender enrollments in all Liberal Arts programs at the undergraduate level, from near parity of the genders, to a 60-40 split favouring females, and at the graduate school levels in a similar direction;
And whereas faculties of Medicine, Psychology, Social Work, Sociology, Veterinary Medicine, among others, are increasingly populated by female students, at both undergraduate and graduate levels;
And Whereas, the male drop-out rate far exceeds the female drop-out rate at all levels of the education continuum, depending on the legal age of school leaving in each jurisdiction;

Now therefore, this journal seeks to bring into the spotlight, the implications of these startling trends, with a view to dimishing their negative impacts on individual male learning requirements, on various professional colleges and sectors, and on the society generally;
It also seeks to solicit sponsorships for scholarships, bursaries and awards to generate research, additional scholarship of both an academic and a practical nature, that will enhance the further education of male learners, at all stages of their lives;
The CJME also seeks to host conferences, seminars, colloquia both in a face-to-face mode and through the publication of its findings in hard copy and in digital mode;
The CJME also seeks to reduce the drop-out rates of male learners, encourage their continuing their formal and informal education and foster an enhanced participation of male students and scholars in public policy debate over the education of male learners.

This publication, and research project solicits names of potential advisors, counsellors, fund-raisers, scholar-patrons, and potential financial sponsors.
It aims to operate as a non-profit educational trust under the terms of Canada Revenue Agency.
* (copyright, The Acorn Centre, 2010)