Men only school workshop

My company used to recruit music graduates to work in IT. Apparently they have a good aptitude match.

In our school the ICT teacher is a woman who apparently is pretty good at almost everything. :)

Sorry, pressed post too soon.

He freely admits he's basically two pages ahead of the class and knows very little about the subject, yet he's also the only male teacher in the school. I do wonder...

Unless it's at least 2 schools in our local area where they have a dedicated ICT unit/teacher which are exclusively male.

DD's ict teacher is also the music teacher. When he praised DD for her quick excellence at tesselations I commented jokily that it was probably down to the hours she spends on Minecraft - "ooh, what's that, then?"

On the plus side, having a majority of female primary teachers does mean that most early years tech, computing and science is taught by women.

I am not concerned about the career ambitions of make uo blogger , dancer and childcare worker because they are stereo typically female & 5 out of the 6 finalists for the BBC Young Dancer of the Year are boys

Stereotypes are just plain bad; ambition is to be fostered as are gender neutral careers

I'm a massive advocate of male childcare workers despite massive opposition from parents

Every time a picture in a book/character in a TV programme displays a male plumber or doctor and a female librarian or teacher it adds to this and massive work needs to be done to create more equality of aspiration.

Round here agricultural labourer/warehouse operator are I guess the male equivalents of your make-up/dancer/childcare worker & simply by me saying that I am adding into the male/female incongruence that exists

Girls are dancers/boys play football

Primary school teachers are mainly female, secondary maths/science teachers are often male

I would definitely complain. I'm much more tech orientated than DH. He struggles with the flipping remote control.

I'd word it along the lines of being concerned that it gives the impression to both boys and girls that tech is a skill for men, not women. With the lack of qualified STEM professionals in UK, we need to encourage all kids who have an aptitude for this to seek a career in this field.

I don't have a problem if someone chooses to be a make-up blogger because it's what they really want to do. I do have a problem with it, if they decide to do it when what they'd really like to do is be a chemist with Max Factor (or whoever), working on new formulas for lipstick and so on, but choose not to do that, because they think girls don't usually do science, and they don't want to be the only one taking Chem and Physics. And by having Dads doing tech workshops, it's reinforcing the idea that girls don't really do science or technology.

I sometimes wish my grandmother were still alive, to ask what she thought of things like this; she read maths at Cambridge (a couple of decades before women were awarded full degrees there), and went on to teach maths and physics in a girls' school till she retired in the late '60s. I wonder if she would have felt we have made more progress by now, or if she would have appreciated that things are easier than they were when she was at school and university. (Also, in her day, either as a school girl or a teacher), parents weren't particularly involved at all, I don't think.)

It annoys me that men have to be encouraged, and women are just expected to support their children's learning.

I am not concerned about the career ambitions of make uo blogger , dancer and childcare worker because they are stereo typically female.

I am concerned because these girls plan to do no post school education and go into jobs that offer poor pay and few prospects .

No one who is not good at dancing aged 16 will suddely make a living out of it once she leaves school. Both my sister and a close friend are professional dancers - they strugle to make end meets and are stil in rented flats ( can't afford to buy ) in their 40s.

Make up blogger - what proportion of girls who want to do this will end up making millions on you tube and what proportion will end up being behind a counter in boots ?

Child care worker - poorly paid and insecure . Where I live it's paid minimum wage even for those who are qualified .

No one woudl think these were great ambitions for boys who are capable of getting good A levels and going to college / university / into a good job . But they are fine because they are " just girls ".

If they are such great jobs, why do more boys not go into them ? STEM jobs have good pprospects , pay and job satisfaction and I think we should be encouraging our daughter to consider them , not telling them they are for men / dads / boys .

There's a 'bring your dad to school day' at ds2's school where they have lots of fun activities -but they do alternate it every other year with a bring your mum to school event instead.

Even so, I do complain that they choose much more stereotypical male and female activities for the two events rather than a varied mix for both. And they asked for mums to volunteer to help out for the Dad's one - and again for them to help at the mum's one... And yep, pointed that one out to them too.

Hope they realise the mixed messages these sort of activities send out - even if they started out with good intentions!

There is some very useful information here www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0000/0770/Father_review_2009.pdf about why men don't read with their children.
I absolutely agree that schools should be working to help dads feel confident about reading with their children. But it's probably quite a hard topic to initiate any plan for increasing dads/male carers involvement in schools. Maybe the school has a cunning plan - woo the men in with techy fun and gradually introduce reading in future sessions once they feel comfy in the school environment. Definitely worth asking the school what their future plans are and how they plan to follow up the tech session to continue increasing male engagement.

Why can't they have a dads and male carers 'reading' or 'arts and crafts' getting involved day...I think it being STEM is the school being stereotypical. I'd write a letter politely querying it, and asking if they've thought about the ramifications (i.e. aren't schools meant to not stereotype children so why are they having an event which rienforces stereotypes?)

You know what really gets my feminist heckles up, baby and toddler things which mainly women attend, cut up fruit, breadsticks no hot drinks...'dad days' BACON SANDWICHES...What's wrong with men having to eat a bit of smushed banana and half a breadstick for once?

You do have to object to the workshop and encourage more thoughtful and careful thinking in the future

I often feel like I am banging my head against a wall when my comments about science for all & no-one giggles when you say you are bad at English (like they do when you announce you are stupid at Maths) are greeted by yes buy your DD does Ballet

The stupid at maths does my head in totally! Why is it acceptable for women to be 'useless' at a major life skill?

Whilst I agree that the workshop is ill thought out - children should be encouraged to participate in the career they wish too

It's OK to suggest more girls go into STEM subjects & I work in Early Years and support a lot of science and maths placed work at Nursery

But to assume that a child is misguided or stereotypical by picking a career that is 'gendered' by other people is a bit sad

My dd (not a STEM specialist by any means, and an average student academically over all) is planning on being a dancer - she is following in her fathers footsteps rather than mine

Encourage them to be scientists, engineers & mathematicians but celebrate their own choice whatever it is

I'd not be happy . It sends an unhelpful message to children , that technology is for men only .

If they want to involve dads, what's wrong with reading skills ?

There are so many messages telling our daughters that STEM is not for them . I've a teenager in high school - she's only of 6 girls in her computing class of 50 !

She's in the top group for maths - she wants to an engineer . Her 3 best friends in that class ( the top group in one of the best state schools in the country ) want to be - a make up blogger ,a dancer and a childcare worker . Can you guess if they are boys or girls ?

Sigh

Utterly bizarre. Push them hard to justify rationale.

Make a complaint.

This is sexist bollocks and shouldn't be happening in our schools.

It does seem very odd. I think a male-only workshop is a good idea to encourage more dads/grandads/male carers to participate in helping out at school, but why not reading? Or music? Or history? It does send entirely the wrong message to make it a STEM-based subject.

The timing is also odd, though - are kids meant to want to go back to their school in the evening? There's a reason why stuff happens straight after school. They could at least have canvassed to see how many dads would be able to make it if it was after school vs how many in the evening. Loads of dads as my school would be able to do it in the afternoon.

A lot of primary schools seem to be stuck in the 1950s (ours does anyway). Very out of date assumptions about roles in the family and who will be available when to do what and so forth.

What on earth are they going to be covering at these "technology skills workshops"?

I don't think you're over-reacting at all BTW.

Agree that you are not over-reacting. Only dads do technology.

Apart from anything else, if only dads do technology and you have to schedule special time for them because dads are all busy at work then who the fuck is going to do the technology thing at other times - do mums just sit around and twiddle their pretty little thumbs and wait for dads to come home to sort it?