Subtraction Problem
The proportion of male teachers has plummeted. Could it be because women have more job options?
A good man is hard to find, says the adage, and, in the teaching profession, it keeps getting harder. According to the US Department of Education, the percentage of American teachers who are men is at a 40-year low.
That means men who do teach find themselves increasingly in the spotlight. Often, it's a flattering light, says Gene Stamell, a third-grade teacher in the Carlisle Public Schools. "If you're a male elementary teacher, and you're competent, I think you'll get a lot more kudos and praise than a competent female teacher," he says. "Sometimes people are amazed that a guy can do it. You're given this respect you don't even deserve."
Jonathan Smith, a fourth-grade teacher at the Willard School in Concord, says that being "a novelty" is part of what makes him successful with children. Students who have had difficulty with tasks or concepts with female teachers may put more energy into the same work with him. "I'm not saying anything different," says Smith. But because he's a man, "they'll pick it up and give it a try."
Stamell and Smith both say parents who know little about them beyond their gender try to enroll children in their classes. This is especially true with the parents of boys. "There are a lot of people out there who are dying for their kid to have a competent, nurturing male teacher," says Stamell.
But for some men, the spotlight brings a less-welcome kind of attention. Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, says, "the very reason men are hired - because they're male - is often the liability. If they're `too male,' then the idea is they don't know how to work with little children or they're not gentle enough." He says that men "perceived as `not male enough' " may be thought of as sexually deviant. "There's this tricky performance to convey that you're `just the right amount of male.'"
Ingersoll likens the isolation felt by some male teachers, especially in elementary schools, to the difficulties faced by women entering science and engineering. But a key difference is that those traditionally male-dominated fields offer higher salaries and status than teaching. Would there have been such a big outcry at Harvard if Larry Summers had asked whether men are really as good as women are with a map and pointer and 30 fourth-graders and 50 state capitals to teach?
Indeed, many researchers and educators I asked about the decrease in male teachers weren't even aware of the numbers: From 1961 to 1986, about 1 in 3 teachers in kindergarten through Grade 12 was male. But that figure has dropped steadily since the 1980s; today, it's 1 in 5. In elementary schools, men went from 18 percent to 9 percent of teaching staffs during the same period.
As a woman who is often asked why I chose to teach when I had other (and, it's implied, better) professional options, I can't help but wonder whether teaching has acquired a taint it didn't have 30 or 40 years ago. Not only is it low-paying and considered "women's work" - which has long been the case in the United States - but it has acquired a new layer of tarnish now that women who choose to can find job opportunities as, say, CEOs or astrophysicists. So men must overcome not only the perception that teaching is women's work but also that it is a fallback profession.
Educators and researchers agree that the decrease in the percentage of male teachers poses a real problem for schools and children. "There's such a dramatic need to have men as role models," says Margaret McKenna, president of Lesley University in Cambridge. "Children learn in different ways and should be exposed to different teaching styles. I don't want to stereotype, but I think there are some things men and women bring to the classroom that different learning styles will relate to."
McKenna, whose school trains hundreds of new teachers every year, says universities should play a more active role in encouraging male students to consider teaching careers. "It's very hard to find your way against society and your peers," she says. "You've got to be pretty determined."
On a brighter note, she is proud to count her own son, a 20-year-old college sophomore, among the ranks of those few men determined to teach.
Alison Lobron teaches English at Concord Academy and is a regular contributor to the Globe Magazine. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com. 