Why So Few Male Teachers Today? Does it Matter?

Public education in America faces Herculean challenges. Beginning with financial inequity, urban decay, heavy teacher attrition, and a strangling, mechanistic federal law (No Child Left Behind), getting a competitive education in many of America's public schools today can be like running a treacherous, if not impossible, gauntlet.

Putting strong teachers in every classroom is a vital ingredient in any recipe for educational success. However, with half of urban teachers quitting within five years, we're not even close to meeting that need. America will require more than 2 million new teachers over the next decade. Training them for excellence and keeping them in the profession must be a national priority.

There are many ways to make teaching more enticing to qualified would-be teachers: pay them more, offer wider student loan forgiveness, and support them in their workspace.

And... offer incentives to males to balance out a female-dominated profession?

Last month, I spoke to Tamar Snyder, a reporter writing about the shortage of male teachers in America. Her concise story went online today.

Here's an excerpt:

According to statistics recently released by the National Education Association (NEA), men comprised just 24.4 percent of the total number of teachers in 2006. In fact, the number of male public school teachers in the U.S. has hit a record 40-year low. Arkansas, at 17.5 percent and Mississippi, with 17.7 percent, have the lowest percentage of male teachers, while Kansas, at 33.3 percent, and Oregon, with 31.4 percent, boast the largest percentage of men leading the classroom.

Why the downward trend in male teaching? According to Bryan Nelson, founder of MenTeach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recruiting male teachers, research suggests three key reasons for the shortage of male teachers: low status and pay, the perception that teaching is "women's work," and the fear of accusation of child abuse.

Many men once in the profession say they quit because of worries that innocuous contact with students could be misconstrued, reports the NEA.

"There's a lack of support for male teachers, a lack of respect, and a lack of being able to be involved in decision-making," says Reg Weaver, president of the NEA. "And I can't say it's getting better."

Low salary levels have also proved to be a deterrent, especially for those men who value being the breadwinners of the family. The average U.S. public school teacher salary for 2005-2006 was $49,026, according to the NEA. "There's a long-entrenched idea that males are supposed to make lots of money and be a big-time breadwinner," Brown says. "But teaching won't make anyone rich."

Historically, a majority of teachers were male until the 1880s, when women pushed for their own education and the opportunity to teach. In the 1930s, after the stock market crashed, a big surge of men returned to education, as they did after World War II, says Nelson. "In tough economic times, men looking for work returned to education," since there were always teaching jobs available, he says.

Of the men who currently choose to pursue a career in education, many are promoted to administrative positions, often quicker than their female colleagues, says Steve Peha, president of Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc., an education consulting company. "Even if men start out in the classroom, they often don't stay there for long," says Peha.

And then there are gender stereotypes to contend with. "Particularly in the younger grades, women are seen as nurturers," says Brown. "Men, not so much."

What can be done to stem the tide and attract male teachers?

Increase recruitment efforts, for starters, say experts. "We've seen efforts to recruit minorities into teaching," says Peha, "and efforts to recruit adults looking for alternative careers, but we've never seen a coordinated effort to recruit men."

To be effective, recruiting must begin while men are still in school, he says. "We won't see more male teachers if we don't see more young men pursuing teaching degrees," says Peha.

What do you think about this?

Dan Brown is the author of the new teacher memoir, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.

Comments

[Guitarsandmore]

"Many men once in the profession say they quit because of worries that innocuous contact with students could be misconstrued, reports the NEA."

Women/girls can and will turn on you and say anything at any given time. Of course it's a worry. Why would a man want to be continually acused of abuse and risk jail? I don't.

2 - 4 years of college will earn you more money in the business world than a 4 year degree plus teaching certificate in the education arena. If you were planning to go to college for six years you would get an EE degree and an MBA. Even just the EE degree alone would be worth double a teaching certificate.

Classrooms have too many students and therefore the amount of real communication that can take place between teacher and student is minimal.


I think you need to recruit men who have already had a career and are looking to slow down. Finishing college only to go back into the classroom sounds akin to being stuck in your mother's Womb forever. Teachers should have should want real world experience in addition to education.

[stevesrant]

Better salaries and benefits is the obvious necessity, which will not happen as long as education is funded solely by property owners (and partially by the Federal Gov). Only when it is funded completely by the Federal government through income taxes, assuring every citizen in every area of the country pays there share, will America have a decent education system with fair pay for teachers. The sentence about men becoming teachers "after the stock market crash" says it all.

[singermuse]

Our dumbed down UN-educational system all the way from kindergarten to college is replete and top heavy with administrators who make far too much money for too little real work. Follow the money. Wherever the pay is low or not keeping up with the cost of living you will find that the majority of workers are women. The feminization of poverty is real.
Young people rising in the ranks are being taught that money is more important than altruism and they are going where they perceive the gettin's good: Busness degrees, Law School, Medicine, and Tech. Teaching is the most reviled profession in our increasingly anti-academic environment. And yet, without teachers, whether in private or public schools, we will all the more see the degeneration and decline of our current society.
It took the Roman Empire hundreds of years to complete it's decline. Sadly it won't take so long for us.

[JustAnotherJoe]

Increase recruitment efforts? What a pathetic answer to a systemic problem. I was a teacher for 9 years and an administrator for 5. Recruiting wasn't my former district's problem. It was retention. I've got two comments:

1)It's not just the men who struggle. I've seen women who were their family's primary means of support struggle, too, which is why the profession is dominated by people, primarily women, who don't have to rely on their teaching salaries to survive. Districts like to employ people who teach for a second income because the districts don't have to offer competitive benefits. For example, I don't know how many times I've heard these secondary earners for lack of a better term, say something like "Oh well, I'll go on my husband's insurance." when faced with the latest health insurance increase. No mistake, I would have done the same if I had the option, but why should the non-educator always have the best benefit package other than the fact that there exists a huge pool of teachers willing to teach for less? Increase in pay would help, but how about offering benefits like matching 401k's, compensation for working on advanced degrees, or affordable health insurance comparable to private industry?

2) The career path in public education is weird. If a teacher does a good job in the classroom, most are encouraged to apply for admin jobs, where the pay is substantially higher, rather than stay in the classroom where they are most needed. Outstanding teachers should be encouraged with financial incentives to stay in the classroom. There's no reason at all why curriculum coordinators and the like should be making thousands of dollars more than classroom teachers.

[jdm58]

The biggest obstacle I believe, in recruiting men to teaching, is student loans. Students are graduating from college with massive debt. Teaching careers, although offering almost instant employment, don't offer good enough salaries to off-set that debt, and pay it off quickly. If a man is also the head of a family, then that debt may be doubled if including his wife's into the equation, and a 49K salary doesn't cut it in todays economy, when factoring in housing, healthcare, food, and transportation.
There should be programs made available for anyone going into education, for student loans, scholarships, and tuition reduction. Teachers in this country are paid vastly less than teachers anywhere else in the world. In this globalized market, we will possibly see good prospects leave our soil to teach elsewhere, if this situation is not rectified.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

The same applies for women teachers who are the head of household as well.

[jdm58]

You are absolutely right! I was only limiting the discussion to men, because that was the point of the article, and as I said, anyone going into education (not just men) should be considered for tuition/loan reduction, scholarships etc... Too many young people are opting into the military as a means to pay for college. Could this be a reason our government is turning its back on teacher scholarships? I mean, if there was an option, would there be as many young men (and women) enlisting?