http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/08/19/some-chicagoland-districts-down-to-11-male-teachers/ Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:26:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/08/19/some-chicagoland-districts-down-to-11-male-teachers/#comment-11765 Anonymous Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:16:19 +0000 http://www.whyboysfail.com/?p=980#comment-11765 This is a surprise? With colleges getting to be more and more female and the college women getting higher GPAs, who do you think is going to get the teaching jobs? There is an inherent fantasy in this article and others on teaching as a career. The fantasy is that there are lots and lots of available teaching jobs and all you have to do is have the will to do it (and the basic qualifications) and you can land a teaching job. It is getting highly competitive. In some cases hundreds of applicants are applying for one job. This is mitigated to some extent by the same basic pool applying for multiple jobs, but the net is that it is very competitive, and far more competitive than it was even a few years ago. Applying for a teaching position requires all sorts of things. You have to submit all of your college transcripts. Who has the higher GPAs? The women. You have to submit letters of recommendation. Where do those come from? If it is from school experience, like from student teaching, it is likely to come from a mentor teacher who is most likely a woman. Again, advantage female. And you have to have a clean record with the law. No DWIs. No drug busts. That will also more likely remove male candidates from the applicant pool. In the face of all that, you would need some sort of affirmative action to start to alter the trend. As the article says, that you don't get that with regard to gender. You get it for racial minorities, but not for gender. So it is not in the least surprising that you see what is happening. Even though public school teachers are already heavily female, they are getting even more heavily female. And given the trends in college overall, and the overall effect of the recession on trying to gain employment out of college, one can only expect the trends to keep swinging further and further female, unless some sort of explicit affirmative action enters the picture. As for your point that the lack of male teachers does not seem to be at the core of the boy troubles, you are likely, in a sense, right. The question is, what are the elements of a solution to those troubles? Male teachers teaching boys would seem to be a reasonable element. One thing we know for sure is that female teachers do not, shall we say, appreciate the boisterness of boys. It does not seem to be as completely unacceptable to male teachers. This is a surprise? With colleges getting to be more and more female and the college women getting higher GPAs, who do you think is going to get the teaching jobs? There is an inherent fantasy in this article and others on teaching as a career. The fantasy is that there are lots and lots of available teaching jobs and all you have to do is have the will to do it (and the basic qualifications) and you can land a teaching job. It is getting highly competitive. In some cases hundreds of applicants are applying for one job. This is mitigated to some extent by the same basic pool applying for multiple jobs, but the net is that it is very competitive, and far more competitive than it was even a few years ago. Applying for a teaching position requires all sorts of things. You have to submit all of your college transcripts. Who has the higher GPAs? The women. You have to submit letters of recommendation. Where do those come from? If it is from school experience, like from student teaching, it is likely to come from a mentor teacher who is most likely a woman. Again, advantage female. And you have to have a clean record with the law. No DWIs. No drug busts. That will also more likely remove male candidates from the applicant pool. In the face of all that, you would need some sort of affirmative action to start to alter the trend. As the article says, that you don’t get that with regard to gender. You get it for racial minorities, but not for gender. So it is not in the least surprising that you see what is happening. Even though public school teachers are already heavily female, they are getting even more heavily female. And given the trends in college overall, and the overall effect of the recession on trying to gain employment out of college, one can only expect the trends to keep swinging further and further female, unless some sort of explicit affirmative action enters the picture. As for your point that the lack of male teachers does not seem to be at the core of the boy troubles, you are likely, in a sense, right. The question is, what are the elements of a solution to those troubles? Male teachers teaching boys would seem to be a reasonable element. One thing we know for sure is that female teachers do not, shall we say, appreciate the boisterness of boys. It does not seem to be as completely unacceptable to male teachers.

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