this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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When almost all teachers are female; almost all librarians are female; almost all children's authors are female. So almost all books available to kids have "hero's" in books that are female. Boys don't engage with the material; this lack of reading engagement has massive knock-on effects for all education. If you can't read well, you can't do anything at school except sports....boys gravitate to sports because the classroom is alienating.
100% the parents need to instill that love of reading early; we don't have a TV at home and our boys love books. We have the Enid Blyton books at home, along with 100's of others. We go to the library at least once a week. There are books everywhere, I read so does my partner....But I fear that our household is abnormal; I don't go to others houses and see books everywhere.
But at schools there needs to be the focus on literacy; currently it just isn't catered to boys. If a boy is interested in tanks and bombs and war and fighting; but all of the books are about magic and the power of friendship and sparkles; is that boy going to think "the library is the place I go to get exciting stories I like"....nope. It is more likely the thought being something like "libraries are for girls".
If your school has a library; go look at the content.
Yes one often missed thing is that teaching used to be a career with a lot more men, to the point you could have called it male dominated.
If we doubled teachers salaries, would we start to see a swing back towards more men?
Maybe; but teaching in NZ is not seen as a prestigious career path.
You would need to up the pay and tackle the view of teachers in wider society.
I'd suggest the low pay is part of why it's not seen as prestigious. Pay teachers like we pay IT workers and I bet that attitude would change within a generation.
I agree; it would fix a bunch of issues.
But it also needs to be competitive; basically only the best get the privilege of teaching the next generation. The qualifications for teachers need to be much higher than they are now; high salary and high entry requirements, with teacher aids to help that require a lower (same as today) qualifications. Similar to the medical system model where there is a surgeon with a bunch of highly qualified helpers.
You couldn't make me go there just for the money. No way am I going to study 3 years just to become a teacher, when I can teach in a world class city like Moscow with only a minor qualification that takes 1 month to get.
Read the Fight Club book if you haven't.