Gender and Teaching: Obvious but unacceptable conclusions
A study is about to be published that seems to confirm what people knew to be true hundreds of years ago -- boys learn from men, and girls learn from women. Of course, only half of this study is acceptable. The half that suggests men might be better than women in some way is wrong. And the obvious conclusion -- that we need more male teachers -- well, we can't have that sort of thinking.
From the Globe and Mail:
For all the differences between the sexes, here's one that might stir up debate in the teacher's lounge: Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women.
That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. His study was to appear Monday in Education Next, a quarterly journal published by the Hoover Institution.
Vetted and approved by peer reviewers, Dr. Dee's research faces a fight for acceptance. Some leading education advocates dispute his conclusions and the way in which he reached them.
Dispute the conclusions? I bet.
Dr. Dee's study is based on a nationally representative survey of nearly 25,000 eighth-graders that was conducted by the Education Department in 1988. Though dated, the survey is the most comprehensive look at students in middle school, when gender gaps emerge, Dr. Dee said.
He examined test scores as well as self-reported perceptions by teachers and students.
Dr. Dee found that having a female teacher instead of a male teacher raised the achievement of girls and lowered that of boys in science, social studies and English.
Looked at the other way, when a man led the class, boys did better and girls did worse.
The study found switching up teachers actually could narrow achievement gaps between boys and girls, but one gender would gain at the expense of the other.
That last point is the most interesting. It says that we need both men and women teachers.
That's a good thing, right?
Wrong.
Right now 80% of teachers in American public schools are women. I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds true in Canada. That means to reach parity in gender, we would have to implement an affirmative action plan...in favour of male teachers.
Affirmative action for men? What next? Eliminating the Status of Women Canada? Unthinkable!
In any case, we can ignore the study. The statistical evaluation of 25,000 students will fall as a house of cards in the face of anecdotes:
“The data, as he presents them, are far from convincing,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, which works to advance the progress of women.
Ms. Greenberger said she found Dr. Dee's conclusions to be questionable and inconsistent. More broadly, she said, boys and girls benefit by having male and female teachers as role models.
“I don't think there are many parents or students, looking back over their educational careers, who haven't been inspired by a teacher of the opposite sex,” she said.
Well, if she thinks that most students will be able to remembers a teacher of the opposite sex that they found effective, then that's all we need to leave well enough alone.
Seriously, though, you know what they'll say. The problem is not that there aren't enough male teachers. The problem is with male students. They should be able to learn just fine from female teachers. If they can't, then we need to re-wire them. Obviously we need to start eliminating gender differences earlier. Gloria Steinem said, "We need to raise boys like we raise girls", and that attitude has shaped public education for nearly twenty years:
The girl-crisis came first and a single professor at Harvard University is the person most responsible for promulgating it. In 1989, Carol Gilligan, a professor at the Harvard School of Education and a pioneer in the field of women’s psychology, announced her finding that the nation’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, "As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing." Gilligan believes girls are silenced –"they lose their voice" as they enter adolescence in our male-centered society. Her distressing portrait of endangered girls had no basis in reality—as I shall show. But it fascinated an uncritical media who helped gain for it a widespread acceptance.
Maybe we can start with the truth for a change. It would be refreshing. And appropriate too, since truth has to be at the core of education anyway.
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Comments
Watch it Steve, that might get you on some hate watch list.
Posted by: SUZANNE at August 27, 2006 09:40 PM
Sounds like a case for (OMG) segregation in school?
Posted by: Alex at August 27, 2006 10:26 PM
See 'Real Women' site on 'homosexual juggernaut' in education. See 'Gale BC' site re this special identity group's leverage in both 'management' and 'union' circles. It's a done deal in BC. Hence Campbell caved in.
In Ontario and BC recruitment for male teachers at the elementary level is critical. Soon there will be no hetero male models at the elementary level in Education. Couple this with the increasing number of female run single parent households, and hetero male role modelling seems on the decline all around.
Posted by: hoff at August 28, 2006 12:15 AM
Interesting points. However, one thing that you may be wrong about: I remember a lot of good female teachers who were "role models" and helped me out with my education. But I'm going to get flamed for that.
And funny, would having more male teachers do anything to stop the problem of "lazy male students"? I know a guy from high school who is lazy and loves to waste his time smoking pot and playing video games instead of working on improving his situation. There were many great teachers who tried to change his ways, including a male English teacher and some male Science teachers. But that did nothing. Tell me, Stephen, would more male teachers change situations like that?
Posted by: Crazy Dan at August 28, 2006 01:29 AM
No thing we do will change the life of every student: That is not possible. We can only act on the averages.
Adding male teachers will fix some of the problems we have with boys in our schools. The problem with adding male teachers is the left, the feminists and some of the hard-right are willing to go to war to ensure that males lose, that all males are defined as a threat to children, that ...
So it comes down to the base question: Do Canadian parent love their sons?
That is the root and the heart of the matter. At present the answer is no ... Are our parents willing to change?
It is a good question.
Posted by: jw at August 28, 2006 03:48 AM
I think the answer isn't segregation in school but simply a more even mix of male & female teachers. It worked for me (How about that for a general anecdotal proof).
But there are few males in school dur to the rash of faked sex assault charges of the [80s.
Posted by: Wimpy Canadian at August 28, 2006 08:06 AM
Quote from the Probe & Fail:
"For all the differences between the sexes, here's one that might stir up debate in the teacher's lounge: Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women."
WRONG. Any kind of substantial debate in teachers' lounges about issues relevant to education, what's best for students, etc. just doesn't happen and probably ain't going to happen anytime soon.
It could be that teachers are just too busy with day-to-day classroom issues, or that they're just not interested in having a good debate. Whatever the reasons, staff rooms are the last places you're going to hear educational issues talked about in any meaningful way.
What a surprise! But why would it be surprising? After all, Teachers' College was also the last place you would find a meaningful debate being engaged in. Feminist and union dogmas were the order of the day and if anyone dared question them, they were shunned and ridiculed.
Teachers in training learned pretty darned fast that if they had any dissenting opinions to the dominant feminist/union manifestos, they'd best be quiet about them if they wanted to have colleagues include them.
It's pretty much the same atmosphere in teachers' staff rooms. Who'd have known?
Posted by: 'been around the block at August 28, 2006 09:25 AM
Hoff,
Most males who are studying to become elementary school teachers are straight. Most male teachers are straight. You seem to imply that male teachers in the elementary level are mainly gay. You better make sure your Gaydar detector is working correctly. What's your orientation? Huh?
Posted by: Robert at August 28, 2006 10:37 AM
Great point on Greenberger's nebulous comments. I question her use as a relevant talking head in the first place. The G&M would have presented a much more constructive analysis of the issue had they sought out opinions from someone in the economic and/or educational fields that had an opposing view.
There are likely enough dissenting views on this hot button topic - going to a party with a narrow agenda doesn't add much to rational discourse...
Posted by: Proud & Unapologetic Winnipegger at August 28, 2006 11:08 AM
So the fix is "obvious" but "unacceptable". Why? Because no one owns the public school system. It's a commons tragedy.
Parents don't own the school system because they don't pay tuition directly, and their tax money is diluted with millions of other taxpayers' money. Students don't own the schools either, because they are told to sit back and enjoy this tremendous "free" resource. And do what they're told. Teachers don't own the school system - they're only employees - but they organized themselves into a union which has taught them that they virtually own their jobs. But because the school system is a government monopoly, and because their pay, benefits and pensions are so far out of line with what people receive who have similar qualifications (mostly liberal arts BAs and non-professional BSs), the teachers end up being afraid to quit, so they are for all intents and purposes owned by the school system. The local school boards don't own the schools any more, because most of the money and all of the rules and regulations come down the pipe from the provincial government. The provincial government doesn't own the schools - technically they belong to the school boards, whose name is on the property title and on the teachers' pay stubs. They also contribute all the rules, regulations, standards, inspections, province-wide examinations, etc. but all of this is done from a position of remote ignorance and stupidity, welded to an attitude of supreme arrogance. The federal government doesn't own the schools either, because they are so remote from anything resembling ownership and control - even though they provide a large portion of the money. In the earn-not provinces and the three earn-not territories I suspect that the federal government provides most of the money, with almost zero control over the results. And none of the politicians own the schools, because they don't personally pay any tuition or the operating costs, and they have no direct control over the schools because they must operate through many fat and obstreperous layers of subordinate politicians, unionized bureaucracy, principals and teachers.
And you think you can reform this system? You can't reform something which you don't own. It's a big, fat, brainless, ownerless Commons Tragedy.
Consider another complicated, multi-year, big-ticket purchase which everyone makes in Canada - buying a car. This is the opposite of a Commons Tragedy. The shareholders of the automakers clearly own their companies. The dealers clearly own their dealerships. The employees do not own their jobs, and they are not owned by their employers. The pay scales and benefits (outside of the Bad Three dodo carmakers) are in line with the free market. The customer does not own the car dealership or the automakers, but he owns the money is his pocket, and he has lots of competition between carmakers and car dealers who want him to trade his money for a car. How? By trying harder and harder to make better cars and provide better service. Bad carmakers and bad auto dealers (who sell bad cars or who mistreat their employees or customers) go out of business, and are replaced by smarter, harder working and more honest businessmen. People work hard to buy their cars and they take pride in them - because they own them.
That is why the cars that you buy get better and better every year, and the selection gets more varied. But your kids' education system gets worse and worse - like gray-colored, tasteless, nutrionless pudding. There are standards up the ying-yang, and billions and billions of dollars are thrown around, but there is no variety, no accountability, no ownership - and crappy results.
I'm reading all these comments from people arguing about how this Trabant of a school system needs "more examinations", "more male teachers", "more hetero teachers", "the teachers need to be examined", "more parent involvement", ... But you all missed the point by a mile. It's a Trabant. It won't get any better than it is right now, because it's the product of a communist system. No ownership. No responsibility. No choice. No freedom.
Posted by: at August 28, 2006 07:46 PM
Interesting study! I wonder how the researchers got approval to run that one? Did Status of Men Canada help to fund it... no, wait...
Posted by: Mac at August 28, 2006 11:35 PM
I'm going to have to look up Trabant, but whoever you are who posted at 7:46 p.m., August 28, you've hit the nail on the head.
And all I can say is: Our poor kids--even though they're the ones who are going to be creating havoc and mayhem--and what's our society going to look like in a few years?
I predict, at the very least, bars on our windows, barbed wire on the fences we'll need around our houses, and if you think "service" is bad now, just wait. Oh yes, if you have a place in the hills, run for it...
Posted by: 'been around the block at August 29, 2006 10:19 AM
 
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