Boys Are Struggling. Male Kindergarten Teachers Are Here to Help.
Boys Are Struggling. Male Kindergarten Teachers Are Here to Help.
Only around 3 percent of kindergarten teachers are men. We interviewed a dozen of them about the joys of the job and the challenges boys face today.
In my experience, the number one reason you see very very few male primary school teachers, and even less kindergarten or prek, is the social assumption by parents AND admin that men both do not know how to care for/teach children of that age, and that they MUST be up to something nefarious.
I think this might depend on where you live. In Germany male kindergarten teachers etc. are in rather high demand.
About 8% in 2022, under 30yold 12.6%, under 20yold 17.9%, over 60yold 2%.
There doesn't seem to be an official quota, at least I couldn't find anything concrete. Should be state law and that's generally easy to find. OTOH there's a literal fuckton of organisations involved running Kindergarten, many are independent associations, others are run by churches or municipalities, all of those may have their official or unofficial guidelines.
(For the Americans: Kindergarten is not part of the school system over here y'all are misusing the term. Kindergarten is where you develop motor skills (and other things) through play, school is where you then learn to write. Definitely no home-work. Generally not mandatory though some states have introduced mandatory developmental tests so that kids who lag behind in some areas can get that fixed by professionals (minimum 3 years education) before school starts so they don't start their school career at a disadvantage)
The push seems to come largely from academia and professional organisations. Here's a nice, long interview in a professional publication from 2013, I recommend reading the whole thing but this strikes me:
In our representative study [...] 40% of parents, 43% of daycare centre managers and 48% of intendants stated that they - more or less intensively - had thought about the risk of abuse by an educator.
Remarkably, however, these survey groups also showed a very high level of approval towards men in daycare centres. In our study, around 90% of parents, daycare centre managers and intendants consider it important that children are cared for by male professionals.90% is rather significant, I'd be interested in numbers from other countries. It's more than enough so that you don't need advocacy to get things started because practically everyone already acknowledges that it's an issue that needs solving, all that was apparently necessary is for someone to sit down and develop ready-made strategies regarding getting men into the profession, allaying fears, making sure that organisational structures make it harder, not easier, for abusers, etc. That seems to be mostly "have them be democratic and not hierarchical", which is of course a good idea in general.
I had an experience in Germany that really stuck with me. It highlighted to me the difference in how men are treated around children. As a north American, it's assumed that older men around children is an unsafe situation and that left me feeling doubt and uneasiness whenever I was around children.
I had the opportunity to work and travel in Germany for a year and picked up a job as a home cleaner. Think Uber but for private property cleaners.
I was scheduled to clean a home I've never been to before and the owner told me that their son would be there to let me in. When I arrived, I called the home owner and she let her son know to let me in. He was probably about 10 years old and I was completely shocked that this person was trusting a complete stranger with her son who was home alone. I did my job and let him stay in his room and didn't bother to clean his room when he refused after I asked.
I did get a chance to meet the parents on later visits to clean but that really put it into perspective to me just different men can be treated in different parts of the world.
This is great. The pay sucks though. The reason why is that the economy does not care about the children. We got immigration. Why the fuck would the economy lose money on kindergarten ? Or on family in general ? It's a trend that keeps going on. Less and less children. Our places are less and less for families.
It isn’t just that. Any job seen as a ‘woman’s job’ is going to pay less. And it isn’t just for the ‘traditional’ women’s jobs, like grade school teacher or secretary. If women enter a field in significant numbers, then wages overall will fall. See veterinary work for one example.
Pisses me the fuck off.
Women are still seen like a child trying to help. It's ridiculous. I don't think it's like that all the time, but education does seem like it. It does feel like taking care of children is not a real job because "anyone can do it" (they can't).
Yeah the right wing goal is to privatize education to further ensure that the rich are the only ones that can control the narrative and get ahead. It’s wild to watch a country go from championing public education to half of the nation vilifying it for corporate and wealthy interests
That's an interesting and somewhat sad point. Economically immigration is probably cheaper for society than raising domestic children properly.
Hypothetically we can scoop the cream from the top of other countries and let them bear the expense of early childhood education, and come out better off than doing it ourselves.
I don't know if what I'm implying is true, just a thought I had. It feels sad that we should no longer have families because of money. It really feels counterintuitive. I never saw any reports or analysis comparing children versus immigration, probably because it's a way too complex question.
I feel like having children has more benefit than entirely relying on immigration.
I vaguely remember there being a male kindergarten teacher when I was that age. there was usually a maximum of 1 per grade up until high school. that's when there was more like a third per grade.
I didn't have a single one until 5th grade, if you don't count gym.
Was Jim transitioning?