The worst thing about teachers' crap pay is how it impacts men

[noblegiraffe]

Is the message I'm getting from this Times article
https://www.thetimes.com/article/6d47f549-bc16-42f5-87eb-1a742ca8dbb0?shareToken=632bef4c3b70c58fa6f1720e42fc2d68

Teacher pay is crap, which means that men are leaving teaching, which means that boys aren't seeing enough positive male role models in schools.

Fine for women to limp along on shitty pay for years though?

Nobody is standing in their way.

I mean this metaphorically.

I wonder why the birth rate is massively declining.

But the article doesn't propose to do anything about the lack of male entrants to the profession. It's just a commentary.

Why is an article stating boys benefit from good male role models so offensive to some on here, some that are teachers as well. Its obvious its important to boys. Boys sometimes respond to men in a way they don't to women. Which teachers should know, its not rocket science.

And before the cries of "but the patriarchy" which i know is a terrible terrible thing, which I'm sick of hearing on here whenever a woman wants to have a go at men, any men, all men etc etc, nothing is their fault...what if the article said some girls in the classroom respond better to a female teacher, would the same vitriol and disgust be seen here??

I don't think so.

I don't think I've ever disagreed with you before @noblegiraffe , but I will do here. I think you've completely missed the point if that article and focused on something that I really don't see there. And your OP title is not remotely representative of what that article said.

I have daughters. When they were young I really wanted them to see and experience women in every possible role. When my DD was admitted to hospital, amidst the worry, I was pleased that her doctor was a woman (much more unusual for hospital doctors back then). Having female role models for jobs that had always been predominantly male was seen as really important for girls back in the 80s and 90s.

It's now time that boys, who are now extremely vulnerable to social media misogynists, need to see men, on a day to day basis, in teaching roles etc. It's every bit as reasonable and important to make sure that there are capable men in these rules to be role models as it was for my DDs to see women in previously male dominated roles.

Teaching pay was an incidental part of that article. But yes, it is a factor. No-one is suggesting that men get paid more, though.
I actually think that the lack of men is one of the things that keeps our salaries low, sickening though that is.

I don’t think it is obvious at all @ssd .

The reason it is ‘offensive’ (and calling something out doesn’t = offensive) is because there is a lack of basic respect for women j inherent in it. Girls don’t need to be told something by a woman for it to be heeded, after all.

I don’t think this is accurate at all. There has been a long and intentional push to get women into various subjects and jobs in order to make the idea of a female in those industries seem normal and achievable to young girls.
Discussing a lack of male teachers isn’t at disrespectful to women.

Really? You think "girls don't need to be told something by a woman for it to be heeded"? Are you saying girls listen better than boys? Your inherent bias is showing here.

No, it isn’t, but indicating that boys are unlikely to listen to or respect women is.

No @ssd , although from that misunderstanding I probably should retract the statement altogether assuming you’re female

Years ago, when I had a particularly troublesome class of rowdy boys, someone in my department had no issue with stating ‘that class needs a male teacher to get them into line.’ Had no issue with that blatantly sexist statement at all. It is those sorts of attitudes - this ‘well boys need men’ (but girls don’t need women) that some on this thread are challenging. But to be honest that reply was downright combative when there was no need for it.

I definitley agree with your final sentence sara.

But how do we keep men in the Classroom , instead of rapid promotion to non teaching roles.? That in itself is problematic. For both male and female role modelling.

It is not a strong enough recruitment strategy to say 'come and work in teaching to be a role model' which is what they seem to heavily rely on.

Women is science are paid (a lot!) less than men in science still, unfortunately. Quite a lot of this is because they do support roles, lab roles, and go more readily into teaching. We persuade girls in to science and engineering telling them they will be fulfilled, excellent role models and that science needs them. Unfortunately the reality for many doesn't quite match the sell. We need to be wary fo that in recruiting men to teaching.

I am sure Noble's OP was deliberately written to provoke debate. But I stand by my belief that it isn't a very well written article in places.

Literally no one has said that. The rhetoric is that boys go into teaching in fewer numbers as it’s not seen as an industry for them to go into. In exactly the same way STEM fields seemed to not be for girls for so long, and there are many many initiatives to address this.

I think the lack of male teachers is because you'd have to be a complete idiot to work with young people/children if you are a man.

One allegation by some pissed off teenager will ruin you. We all know that people will assume an allegation against a woman must be some sort of misunderstanding, because women don't abuse children. But any allegation against a man will be believed absolutely, because children never lie.

It's a double standard but one that has effectively wiped out male teachers.

Pay isn't a consideration.

How much does anyone think the DfE really cares about men in classrooms? They just want enough warm bodies . And successive governments haven't done a very good job with that.

The lack of men, as the article says, is proof that our salaries are too low. It’s something I’ve used as an argument myself against posters who say that the problem with teaching is behaviour or workload but that the pay is fine. It’s women who have stayed in teaching who claim the pay is fine, clearly the general picture is that those women are underselling themselves (unless people want to argue that men are worth more because they are men 👀)

However, the article is fretting about a lack of role models for boys - if over a third of secondary teachers are male, they will have male role models. Are those current males shit at the job of role model? Why are they not working to counter Andrew Tate if their presence is key? Maybe just being in the classroom in front of the kids isn’t enough.

The article also conflates the issue with primary schools where there is a definite lack of male teachers to the point where a child may not encounter a male teacher in their school. However, as the article states, numbers have always been low there, and the article doesn’t mention the stigma against men working with very young children even though that is clearly even more of a problem than pay in primary. How to tackle that? Is the lack of male role models more important in primary where they have very few?

It’s an incredibly superficial article that ignores some obvious questions and also makes nothing of the fact that women are leaving the profession in greater numbers than men.

i do agree part of it is the stigma of being a male teacher
”you a nonce?”
It’s caring professional generally isn’t it. All perceived as women’s jobs

If the men are crap, blame the women! Got it

Indeed, who else would you blame for your choice in partner.

Your reading of the piece OP is different from mine. I totally disagree with your interpretation.

They never lie these men, pretend to be decent. Nope, it's all the women's fault that men don't want to be teachers or decent fathers