In classrooms across the US today, some 80% of teachers are female. A recent report shows that in these classrooms, it is quite likely that the teacher in front of these classrooms then affects how those students learn – but perhaps not in the way you might think. If the teacher is female, she is likely to see the male students as disruptive. If the teacher is a male, the female students are less likely to think the class useful to their future.
Interesting. I never really thought of it. Perhaps there is something to this. It is also interesting that in the case of a female teacher it is the male students who are disruptive and in the case of the male teacher it is the female students who find the class does not fit into their future plans – there doesn’t appear to be any issue that the male teacher has with the female students. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how it appears to be the females who are unsatisfied, and I’ll just keep moving along.
The article in the paper doesn’t mention the grade (or grades) that are studied, but a quick search turns up what appears to be the essay in question. I’m not sure how long it will be available, so look while you can. Browsing the text seems to indicate several grade groupings, from 6th, 8th and 12th grade, implying that the study was fairly comprehensive. It’s only about 8 pages long, with a bunch of pictures and graphs, so it shouldn’t take long to read if you want to check out the whole thing for yourself.
It does raise the point that if boys and girls learn better from the same sex (that is to say, from teachers of the same sex), it would seem to follow that they learn best in the company of the same sex – this would remove a number of pressures from them and allow them to concentrate on their education. I’ve never attended a single-sex educational facility (or any facility of any kind, short of a restroom), so I can’t really speak to it. But it does seem as if it should make a certain amount of sense.
About the only experience of any sort that I have is that I lived in Charleston (South Carolina) when The Citadel was integrated a number of years ago, and there was quite a furor over that. Even today there are reports that as many as 1 in 5 female cadets undergo some form of sexual assault while they are there. What I’d really like to see is a male student try and get into a historically female school.
It isn’t that I have anything against those institutions, mind you, or that I think the male needs any sort of advancement – I just really don’t get why it’s okay for a woman to cause such a fuss over the all-male school, where if you tried to get a man into the all-female school, all you would hear are screams decrying him as a pervert. Perhaps rightfully so. It just seems to be a bit of a double standard is all, and I don’t get it. Can anyone explain?