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Anorak News | Why Adam Lanza murdered only women: no male teacher brave enough for primary school

Why Adam Lanza murdered only women: no male teacher brave enough for primary school

by | 7th, January 2013

NOT many women at the US gun shows. Why? Waren Farrell writes below the headline: “Mass Shootings The Result of Abandoning, Abusing Boys“. Adam Lanza murdered women:

 “For boys, the road to successful manhood has crumbled. In many boys’ journey from a fatherless family to an almost all-female staff elementary school such as Sandy Hook, there is no constructive male role model…There are few things a culture does as important as raising children. We can’t continue to fail half of them.”

 William Gormley:

Despite some inroads by men, teaching remains a female-dominated profession. This is especially true for younger children. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 2% of pre-K and kindergarten teachers and 18% of elementary and middle-school teachers are men. The situation is more balanced, but not evenly balanced, in secondary school, where 42% of teachers are men… men represent an underutilized talent pool. If we could attract more males to teaching, school districts would have an easier time hiring outstanding individuals. The point is not that men are better teachers, but that highly qualified men are far less likely to apply for teaching jobs…boys in particular benefit from the presence of male role models in the classroom. As Stanford University professor Thomas Dee has documented, in a study of more than 20,000 middle-school students, boys perform better when they have a male teacher, and girls perform better when they have a female teacher. If we want to do something about boys’ often sluggish classroom performance, more male teachers could be a useful step.

So. Who what man wants to teach children at primary school?

One in four primary schools in England still has no male registered teacher, statistics show…Only 12% of primary school teachers are male, compared with 38% of secondary school teachers – with the proportions virtually unchanged since last year.

In 2009:

A survey of 1,000 men carried out for the BBC last year suggested boys would benefit if there were more male teachers. The adults questioned said that as children they would have worked harder if instructed by men and would have been more likely to go to a male teacher for help with problems such as bullying.

Why are there so few men teaching primary school children? Any ideas..?

We asked them to explore what specifically drives men to consider primary teaching, and what the barriers are.  They told us that working in a female-dominated environment is not always easy and having male colleagues is important both to the individual teacher and the wider school environment. But there are even more serious barriers.  In my view, the biggest obstacle is society’s attitude. Men are deterred, partly  because there is a prurient element of society that questions the motivation when men wish to work closely with young children. Recent NCH research supports this view. That is an immensely sad indictment of the way, in this so-called enlightened century, we can still be so uncritically suspicious of people who share the most selfless of motives: to help improve young lives.  This fear of being labelled a paedophile is the single biggest deterrent to men who  would otherwise consider teaching in our primary schools. Yet there is no evidence  that our children are at widespread risk from men who want to teach.

So says Graham Holley, Chief Executive, Training and Development Agency for Schools.

It’s all about prejudice.



Posted: 7th, January 2013 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink