‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ in schools is everyday sexism

[putyourshoesonnow]

To me the terms ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ are unequal because ‘Sir’ is a term of respect whilst ‘Miss’ has less gravitas as it has connotations of youth, juniority and marital status and can be seen as diminishing to adult women.

This has bugged me for a while, as I think it is exactly the wrong message that young people should be receiving in school.

A perfect alternative may not exist, but surely we can do better than this?

YABU - Sir and Miss are fine, no problem here
YANBU - Sir and Miss are too unequal and we should seek an alternative

I don’t know why people are saying that it’s so the children don’t have to remember staff names. They know the names of their teachers, and will ask for them by name when relevant, they just use Miss and Sir when speaking directly to the teachers. Obviously it’s also useful for talking to an unknown adult, but that’s not the primary purpose.

I don't know. My dc are quite capable of telling a story along the lines of:

"It was really funny today because sir(1) told us to go into the hall and when we went in sir(2) was juggling and Harrison picked up a ball and sir(3) told him to put it down and then he started juggling better than sir(2) and sir(3) told him he should be in a circus. Then sir(4) came and told us we should be outside...."

Then they get annoyed because you confused sir(1) with sir(3)😂

I am married but every single school kid calls me Miss. It is so much easier for everyone to call the male teachers Sir and the female teachers Miss. Our school has a lot of teachers. It’s impossible to know all of their names. I don’t find the children show me any less respect. On a one to one basis they call me Mrs Super hans. But in the corridors it’s just Miss.

Ma'am is not American 🤣

If you had met the late Queen you would have been instructed to call her Ma'am. If you are in court and have a female judge you call her Ma'am because it is the correct female equivalent to Sir. If you are a police/military officer addressing a female superior officer you call her Ma'am. In all of those examples calling them Miss would be incorrect, rude, and could get you in trouble.

Schools are the anomaly using Miss is not equivalent to Sir.

I just asked DD what they do at their school. Most kids just use Sir and Miss and it’s because of pure laziness. It’s shorter than Mr whatshisface or miss teachermcteacherface or mrs thingymabob. If anything, it’s an equal lack of respect, because they just can’t be bothered.

I’m the first to call out sexism but honestly, after 40 years of teaching, this doesn’t bother me. I’m Ms Notellinganyone and will pick the kids up if they write it wrong and they tend to call me Ms/Miss Not.

Not really sure those who ferociously use "Mr X" and "Miss X." instead of Sir/Miss have entirely solved the problem of titular inequality. Really it's replacing one problem with another.

What is needed, is a universal ungendered title to denote the level of formality that society feels is appropriate between teacher and pupil. We could use "Teacher X" (cf. "Doctor X") so easily that it makes you wonder why we don't.

If there are other languages that have achieved this, it would be fascinating to dig into their social and cultural history to see how and why.

Alternatively there is the question of whether we think it is appropriate for children to be expected to automatically respect teachers.

"Ma'am" is more prevalent in the US, but it is definitely not American. It's an abbreviation of "madam."