Scarcity Of Males Is Elementary

Walk into most elementary schools these days, and you’ll find the place in bloom. There’ll be fresh lists of classroom rules, crisp American flags, bright-colored name tags in the shapes of lions, bears and dinosaurs. But unless you run into the principal or janitor, there’s one species you’re not likely to see: men.

Decades of effort to lure men back to grade schools have undeniably failed. Nationally, about one in 10 elementary school teachers is male. And if you count only those men teaching kindergarten through third grades, the numbers are closer to one in 50.

It’s hard to measure the harm this does. But this much is certain: The most impressionable children are learning that only women have the patience, compassion and, most important, the interest in personally guiding them through their formative years.

So what’s keeping men out? In part, it’s the relatively low pay and status. But according to Iowa researcher Jim Allan, there’s another problem. For many men, working in an elementary school means working under siege.

Like women and minorities in other fields, male elementary teachers tend to feel isolated, scrutinized and easily discounted, Allan writes in “Doing ‘Women’s Work”’ (Sage, $24), a scholarly book that examines the work lives of male secretaries, nurses, strippers and others.

Allan, an assistant professor at Loras College in Dubuque, conducted in-depth interviews with 15 male elementary teachers, and found that most had little trouble getting their jobs. In fact, knowing they would benefit from affirmative action was an incentive for several to go into the field.

But once they landed their jobs, things got tougher. Female colleagues often questioned the abilities of these teachers who apparently got hired “just because they are men.” One of Allan’s interviewees reported that a woman teacher once told him flatly: “I do not believe in men in the elementary ed system.”

Allan also found that principals (70 percent of whom are male) sometimes turned against the male teachers they hired - especially if the teacher was assertive. As one male teacher told Allan: “Whatever I would say (to the principal) would be viewed as a disagreement or a threat, whereas a woman could get away with it.”

Perhaps most annoying to the men Allan interviewed were the confusing expectations of them. While they were often expected to be “male role models,” there was no guide for what kind of “masculinity” they should model. Should they be disciplinarian surrogate fathers to the children, or empathic nurturers?

If they chose the latter, of course, they were suspect. One male fifthgrade teacher said his concern with public perceptions stopped him from teaching in the lower grades. “People look at a male first-grade teacher as being a little bit … different,” the teacher said. “You know what I mean. Family acquaintances might see this as strange.”

Male teachers also had to deal with the real threat of sexual abuse allegations. Even if they had the courage to be a nurturer, they were often counseled to be one without displaying affection. “I used to have kids sit on my lap, little kids,” one veteran fourth-grade teacher told Allan. “I don’t touch anybody now.”

All this makes closing the grade-school gender gap a formidable task. In fact, most of those interested in educational equity seem to have given up, focusing instead on rooting out gender bias in textbooks and teaching methods. But while that’s admirable work, sexism in the schools is not likely to be eliminated as long as men remain extinct.

Mention: Nationally, men account for about 220,000 of the 1.5 million teachers in kindergarten through eighth grades. In grades 9 through 12, men account for 450,000 of the nearly 1 million teachers.

Source: National Education Association

Male call: In what grade did you have your first male teacher? How were he and other male teachers different from women? Send responses to VoiceMale, P.O. Box 8071, Lexington, Ky. 40533-8071, or to e-mail address nchetaol.com.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Neil Chethik Universal Press Syndicate