Topical Teaching

As a male teacher I don’t buy into the theory that boys are suffering due to the lack of male teachers. Great teachers, whether they be male or female is what our children really need. Gender only really comes into the equation when comparing teachers of equal value. I would argue that if there were more great teachers out there, there would be less of an urge to fix the gender imbalance in teaching:

Add to that the low barrier to entry, with teaching degrees having among the lowest Australian Tertiary Admission Rank scores, and you’d think there’d be no shortage of candidates lining up to educate our offspring. But for a variety of reasons, men are shunning the opportunity to become teachers, and that could have dire consequences for boys.

If you have primary school-aged children then you’re acutely aware of just how few male teachers are in the system. Latest figures show that eight out of 10 teachers in primary schools are female.

The shortage of male teachers has many worried about the impact on boys, particularly those lacking male role models within the family unit. Some boys can go through their entire primary school years without having a male teacher.

That’s a problem in a country with about 1 million one-parent families, the vast majority of whom are single-mother families.

It shouldn’t be up to the education system to provide positive male role models for children but the reality is that many boys lack male authority figures in their lives and would benefit greatly from having male teachers.

Tags: Male Teacher, Male Teachers, Male Teachers and boys

This entry was posted on August 19, 2015 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Male Teachers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.