Ask Mr. Dad: Wanted: Male elementary school teachers

Dear Mr. Dad: My twins (one boy, one girl), are starting fourth grade in the fall and we just found out that their teacher is a woman. That isn’t a problem, of course, but when my wife and I started talking about this, we realized that the twins have never had a male teacher, and that our older kids – one in middle school, one in high school – didn’t have male teachers until they were in seventh grade. Looking even further back, neither my wife nor I had a male teacher until high school. Why are there so few men teaching in elementary schools? And are our kids being hurt by the lack of adult male role models?

A. Great questions. The gender gap in education is thriving, and doesn’t seem to be getting any better. 97.5 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers are women, as are 78.5 percent of elementary school teachers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

There are a few factors that contribute to the absence of male teachers, most of which are the result of overt sexism. Teaching – especially in primary schools – is notoriously low paying. And since we still put a huge amount of pressure on men to be the primary breadwinner (even a majority of supposedly open-minded millennials agree with that ’50s-era sentiment), men are less likely than women to look at teaching as a viable career option. Worse still, a number of studies have found that male elementary school teachers (and those who consider teaching) are made to feel un-masculine. Others are afraid of being perceived as pedophiles, particularly if they were to touch a child. And of course, there’s something of a vicious circle, where boys, most of whom rarely ever have a male teacher, eventually come to see teaching as something that’s done by women. Not surprisingly, that makes them less likely to want to become teachers themselves than pursue some other career in which they’ve seen men succeed and make a difference.

It’s widely accepted these days that gender and racial diversity are essential, in large part because they expose kids to a variety of different viewpoints and experiences. As the father of three daughters, I find it really annoying – and sad – that our quest for diversity doesn’t include areas such as teaching (and nursing), where men are vastly underrepresented (and where minority men are nearly invisible. According to the US Department of Education, only two percent of educators are black males). Here are just a few ways this anti-male sexism in education hurts our kids:

Children – especially those growing up in single-parent households (which are predominately headed by women) – often see teachers as mentors and role models. Having more male teachers would show kids that men can be caring, loving, and supportive.

Girls outperform boys in virtually every academic area, a disparity that a growing number of experts attribute to the disproportionate number of female teachers. In one study, researchers Kevin McGrath and Mark Sinclair found that male students preferred male teachers because of perceived shared experiences, interests, ways of thinking, better comprehension of their play, and better ability to relate.

Several studies have found that boys with male teachers are more engaged, work harder in school, and perform better than those with female teachers. Johns Hopkins researcher Nick Papageorge found that having one black teacher in elementary school, reduced the chance of a low-income black male student dropping out of high school by 39 percent and of going to college by 29 percent. Since male teachers as a whole are nearly as rare as minority male teachers, one could reasonably expect the same to be true of the connection between male teachers and male students, regardless of ethnicity.

Given these last two points, is it any wonder that while 87 percent of high school girls graduate, only 77 percent of boys do? Or that men earn only 43 percent of bachelor’s and 40 percent of master’s degrees?