I've previously read about studies where girls are more likely to be helped by teachers, where boys are more likely to be told "I know you can do it, go and try again". I was reading this in a book arguing the girls were disadvantaged by this bias because boys got to learn better this way where girls basically got told the answer. This study was in younger primary aged kids.

But if we know this happens, what if this becomes a disadvantage in later study? When the work becomes too hard to work out on your own, but the teacher sends you away anyway?

Alternatively, I know many people who trained as teachers but didn't stay because of the politics and general working environment (outside of the kids). What if the teachers who stay are the jaded ones that just don't care anymore?

[–] absGeekNZ 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

[–] Dave 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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?

[–] jeff11 0 points 1 year ago

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.

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