Now, Wheelock is trying to boost its enrollment and its bottom line by making itself more attractive to this underrepresented group. One would think that it might have been easy to lure male students to a campus teeming with women, but Wheelock’s pursuit of the opposite sex is proving difficult when fewer men want to go into teaching, still the college’s specialty.
Men make up only 8% of the student body. When I went to West Point, the ratio was about 87:13 men to women. In other words, guys have more "options" at Wheelock than women did at West Point. Wow.
4 comments:
Interesting post you have Darren. I will say that I have not really found any males on campus that want to become teachers. I have one friend who shows interest in teaching college English. The ones that want to be teachers are the females. Nevertheless, we need teachers in the school systems.
When I consider my own trip through the edu-BS that passes for credential programs at Cal State, one thing stands out: most of the proffies I had were female libs. I can't say whether this is common at other campuses, though I wouldn't be surprised were it so.
The long parade of female lib proffies was, at times, very discouraging. The classes often seemed more like lib indoctrination than anything else, and the intolerance of disagreement was stifling. It makes me wonder if having a more balanced faculty-- more conservatives, perhaps even a few males-- would get more dudes to teach.
Not only are there few male teachers, but those that go into the profession tend to teach the older grades from what I've seen.
I'd like to hear what others think, but *I* have noticed almost zero male teachers in k-5. I'm wondering why this is but would like to hear more about it.
Is it because of fear of molestation accusations? B/c those could happen with an older child, too...
Is it that men don't like to play circle time and that sort of thing, but want to teach the material straight through without having to sing the days of the week every morning?
Is it a "high school teachers get more respect" thing because they teach physics rather than Dr. Seuss day?
OH! Here's a good one. Parents are less involved with high schoolers, and men don't like to play emotional mind games with some of these people. (There. I said it. Hey, I'm one of the parents teachers dislike, so might as well.)
Mrs. C, you're correct, but in my case it's twofold: I don't connect well with younger kids (who aren't mine) AND the subject matter interests me more. I think women, having actually done the child baring thing, tend to naturally connect better with the younger ages.
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