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Wow that's a really big claim. Is there any research or reason you claim elementary teachers, specifically women, were pushed into the job (or to teach lower gr

Wow that's a really big claim. Is there any research or reason you claim elementary teachers, specifically women, were pushed into the job (or to teach lower grade) because they aren't as good at math?! That's a big statement. Without research it's pretty absurd and comes off to me as sexist. Though I think I get maybe the intention that sexist ideas and gendering subjects has created an education gap. The teachers i know do it because it's their passion and many have post grad degrees and advanced training despite not being paid enough to cover the loans without income based repayment..

DoreenMichele 5y ago
were pushed into the job (or to teach lower grade) because they aren't as good at math?! That's not at all what I said. No one pushes them into teaching. It gets framed as "Well, if you can't hack the math, you have an easy out. You can just go teach children. That doesn't require a strong math background." Men get discouraged from teaching small children and get stigmatized as "possibly a child molester." Women get the message, implicitly or explicitly, that caring for and teaching young kids is what we are best suited for. It is generally true that women fairly often get told, explicitly or implicitly, that they don't need to really have career ambition because it's really a man's responsibility to provide for the family. The teaching profession is known to be family friendly and is often considered an ideal choice for a young woman who wants a career and a family. Women are given an "easier" answer for their life than making it on their own. They can marry well (and never mind that this leaves a lot of women out in the cold these days). In contrast, men are generally told they need to be good earners to have any hope of marriage. I don't have any sources at my fingertips and a lot of this is common knowledge, so I don't think I need to back it up. I became aware of this as a trend at universities when I was involved with The TAG Project* years ago and regularly spoke with people in the education field or who had gone to college and women got very different messaging from counselors and staff if they were struggling with certain subjects than men typically got. We still have a huge gender disparity in who teaches what grade levels and in how comfortable most women are with STEM subjects, so I don't have any reason to believe any of this has fundamentally changed. Judging by the stats for how many men you find in early childhood education versus women, it's clear that society as a whole still shuttles women in that direction by some mechanism and men in another direction. * http://www.tagfam.org/ http://www.tagfam.org/
- mashka 5y ago
  Anecdotally and from my personal experience, this is unfortunately accurate. I would add two points to this depiction of scholastic life: Teaching is not a highly regarded position in US society in general (I.e. those who cannot do, teach). There is a trend within the US and UK to view STEM subjects negatively. The derogatory “nerd” stereotype is not so prevalent among other cultures. Growing up in the US, it was very clear that you could be either attractive/well-liked or good at math. For those that happened to possess both features, discussions would come from the angle that the person is attractive/well-liked in spite of being good at STEM. The underlying premise seemed to be that you had to extra good-looking to be labeled as attractive if you were also to do well in math.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    I'm not sure I'd call it a "trend" (since there seems to be a concerted, if not obviously successful effort now to get more kids interested in STEM in the US at least), but more of a long-running thread of anti-intellectualism in general.
- andersonvieira 5y ago
  > Judging by the stats for how many men you find in early childhood education versus women, it's clear that society as a whole still shuttles women in that direction by some mechanism and men in another direction. Or perhaps, women, in average, have a higher natural predisposition to take care of young children than men. That would not be a surprise, since women get pregnant and, as far as I know, generally took care of children while men went out to hunt and fight. Of course, nobody should be pressured to choose a profession based on a stereotype.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Or perhaps, women, in average, have a higher natural predisposition to take care of young children than men. A few quotes from the below article: From colonial times and into the early decades of the 19th century, most teachers were men. 1840s: Feminization Begins The reformers argued that women were by nature nurturing and maternal, as well as of high moral character. https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html In contrast, early programmers were mostly women and it is now a male dominated field. There is a lot of research and we are quite confident that trends of this sort in various fields are driven by societal factors, and never mind how much people of a particular era try to come up with various justifications for how one gender is supposedly innately more predisposed to X for some reason.
brylie 5y ago
Please remember to assume good faith by taking a charitable interpretation of people's words. For example, we can see reference to the broader issue of gender bias rather than so narrowly focus on a specific claim about elementary teachers. To that point, there is substantive and substantial evidence of gender bias in STEM: Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED509653 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED509653
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Thanks for the reminder. Yeah I definitely called that out in my comment. But my point still stands a lot of this comment thread has a, charitably put it, strongly male point of view.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

were pushed into the job (or to teach lower grade) because they aren't as good at math?! That's not at all what I said. No one pushes them into teaching. It gets framed as "Well, if you can't hack the math, you have an easy out. You can just go teach children. That doesn't require a strong math background." Men get discouraged from teaching small children and get stigmatized as "possibly a child molester." Women get the message, implicitly or explicitly, that caring for and teaching young kids is what we are best suited for. It is generally true that women fairly often get told, explicitly or implicitly, that they don't need to really have career ambition because it's really a man's responsibility to provide for the family. The teaching profession is known to be family friendly and is often considered an ideal choice for a young woman who wants a career and a family. Women are given an "easier" answer for their life than making it on their own. They can marry well (and never mind that this leaves a lot of women out in the cold these days). In contrast, men are generally told they need to be good earners to have any hope of marriage. I don't have any sources at my fingertips and a lot of this is common knowledge, so I don't think I need to back it up. I became aware of this as a trend at universities when I was involved with The TAG Project* years ago and regularly spoke with people in the education field or who had gone to college and women got very different messaging from counselors and staff if they were struggling with certain subjects than men typically got. We still have a huge gender disparity in who teaches what grade levels and in how comfortable most women are with STEM subjects, so I don't have any reason to believe any of this has fundamentally changed. Judging by the stats for how many men you find in early childhood education versus women, it's clear that society as a whole still shuttles women in that direction by some mechanism and men in another direction. * http://www.tagfam.org/ http://www.tagfam.org/

mashka 5y ago
Anecdotally and from my personal experience, this is unfortunately accurate. I would add two points to this depiction of scholastic life: Teaching is not a highly regarded position in US society in general (I.e. those who cannot do, teach). There is a trend within the US and UK to view STEM subjects negatively. The derogatory “nerd” stereotype is not so prevalent among other cultures. Growing up in the US, it was very clear that you could be either attractive/well-liked or good at math. For those that happened to possess both features, discussions would come from the angle that the person is attractive/well-liked in spite of being good at STEM. The underlying premise seemed to be that you had to extra good-looking to be labeled as attractive if you were also to do well in math.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call it a "trend" (since there seems to be a concerted, if not obviously successful effort now to get more kids interested in STEM in the US at least), but more of a long-running thread of anti-intellectualism in general.
andersonvieira 5y ago
> Judging by the stats for how many men you find in early childhood education versus women, it's clear that society as a whole still shuttles women in that direction by some mechanism and men in another direction. Or perhaps, women, in average, have a higher natural predisposition to take care of young children than men. That would not be a surprise, since women get pregnant and, as far as I know, generally took care of children while men went out to hunt and fight. Of course, nobody should be pressured to choose a profession based on a stereotype.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Or perhaps, women, in average, have a higher natural predisposition to take care of young children than men. A few quotes from the below article: From colonial times and into the early decades of the 19th century, most teachers were men. 1840s: Feminization Begins The reformers argued that women were by nature nurturing and maternal, as well as of high moral character. https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html In contrast, early programmers were mostly women and it is now a male dominated field. There is a lot of research and we are quite confident that trends of this sort in various fields are driven by societal factors, and never mind how much people of a particular era try to come up with various justifications for how one gender is supposedly innately more predisposed to X for some reason.

brylie 5y ago

Please remember to assume good faith by taking a charitable interpretation of people's words. For example, we can see reference to the broader issue of gender bias rather than so narrowly focus on a specific claim about elementary teachers. To that point, there is substantive and substantial evidence of gender bias in STEM: Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED509653 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED509653

dillondoyle 5y ago
Thanks for the reminder. Yeah I definitely called that out in my comment. But my point still stands a lot of this comment thread has a, charitably put it, strongly male point of view.