7 ms·

Wages alone won't do it. You have the greater forces of an industry that conspires to exclude one gender and all but one ideology. The shortage is self-inflict

Wages alone won't do it. You have the greater forces of an industry that conspires to exclude one gender and all but one ideology. The shortage is self-inflicted. Exceedingly few people are being allowed to do the job. Edit: downvote away but the numbers don't lie. Male elementary school teachers hasn't passed 18% in decades (it's even worse in K-3 where we're talking low single digits) and there are multiple news stories covering the reasons. If you don't think men aren't being chased out of that profession then you don't know any teachers.

azemetre 4y ago
I don't really think it's a conspiracy or ideology (lol). Teachers pay extremely poor in the vast majority of states in the US. I mean a scrum expert makes more than an elementary school teacher. Wages absolutely have everything to do with it, why deny it and try to make it a political issue (lol)? Few people do the job because it's an extremely bad deal. You will make more as a bartender than you will as a teacher, with the added bonus of a restaurant manager willing to kick out unruly guests whereas a school admin will likely side with the parents. Typically the jobs that are most useful to society pay extremely bad (janitors, garbage collection, teachers, nursing assistants, dock workers, delivery people, etc). I'd checkout bullshit jobs manifesto if you haven't" https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
- willcipriano 4y ago
  > Teachers pay extremely poor in the vast majority of states in the US. You hear this over and over and nobody ever provides numbers, they just assure you it's horrible.
  - piva00 4y ago
    You can check some numbers, ranked, by state: https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-state-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Numbers are not going to capture the terrible quality of life at work for many teachers. Plus all the extra hours they work outside of school.
      - mancerayder 4y ago
        There's also a very long set of holidays.
        camgunz 4y ago
        Teachers often have to do teaching work over the holidays or attend continuing education. Or they have to work their 2nd job because teaching doesn't pay enough.
        loonster 4y ago
        Dont forget about the vacation and PTO ontop of the holidays. I would gladly take a 20% pay cut to get the same perks.
        notacoward 4y ago
        So why don't you? Your employer would almost certainly be willing (source: I have successfully gone through this kind of negotiation myself). If they're not, there are probably other employers looking for the same skills. Or was your claim merely convenient rather than true?
        loonster 4y ago
        I'm a tool designer for a small company. The company doesnt have the manpower to cover abcenses that long. I could probably negotiate that if I left for a bigger company. This would also likely require a move.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    The NEA has great numbers on their website: https://www.nea.org/resource-library/teacher-salary-benchmarks https://www.nea.org/resource-library/teacher-salary-benchmar.... Let me post the US average here: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Starting | Top Bachelor's | Starting Master's | Top Master's | Top Salary | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | $41,770 | $60,381 | $45,391 | $70,279 | $76,540 | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- busterarm 4y ago
  Because despite the low salary men still want to teach. The reaction to that desire to teach is suspicion. Men are literally demonized in this profession. This isn't "making it political", it's the accepted reality of the profession.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - em-bee 4y ago
    in new zealand men are practically not allowed to work as teachers for that reason. this is a shame really. teaching is the one profession where gender parity should be enforced by law because kids need the rolemodels. i spent a year in a US highschool, and the teachers i had there were fantastic. my teacher in US history was most enthusiastic, and i enjoyed the class despite failing it. that was a few decades ago. and already then it was known that teachers don't get paid well. my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it. I wonder if the people cooking at fast food restaurants or janitors cleaning bathrooms or people stocking shelves at wal mart really love it. And does loving a job necessarily correlate with being able to do the job?
      - em-bee 4y ago
        the difference of those jobs to being a teacher is how much education it takes to get there. you don't spend years in college to become a janitor. and as for love correlating with ability. it's up to the teacher-training programs to weed out those incapable of teaching. i don't know how it's done in the US but elsewhere teachers have to spend many hours in classrooms under supervision before they get their own classes. a big part of teaching is classroom management and there, love and enthusiasm make a big impact.
- stolenmerch 4y ago
  Teachers make 13% more than the average salary across the U.S., yet public perception is that they are horribly underpaid. No one is getting rich being a teacher, but they are certainly paid a decent wage. It's a hard job but most jobs are hard. I know a ton of school teachers. It's true they put in extra work each night but every single one of them has the summer off to relax and recharge. They are also free to work another job in the summer to supplement their salary. https://www.business.org/hr/workforce-management/best-us-states-for-teachers/ https://www.business.org/hr/workforce-management/best-us-sta...
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    What about only public school teachers?
    - giantg2 4y ago
      That would be interesting to see. In my experience, many private schools actually pay less.
      - ksaj 4y ago
        My partner works at a private school where the students pay more than a typical university to attend - lots of business and celebrity parents. I was surprised to find out that some of the teachers are indeed paid less than they would be if they worked at a public school. If they've worked there a long time, then their pay is significantly better, so there is incentive to stick with it at one location. However, the perks are better. For one, if they have children, they can attend the school for free. They also get very sophisticated lunches that only cost them $5/day.
    - panda888888 4y ago
      Private schools usually pay less (they aren't unionized) but the working conditions are slightly better.
  - feet 4y ago
    National average is such a massively useless metric when we have such incredible variety in cost of living across locales
- giantg2 4y ago
  "Wages absolutely have everything to do with it. "Everything" is too far. My male friend abandoned teaching after doing his student teaching and earning his license. It had nothing to do with pay. He took a lower paying job in a more expensive area. He said the school policies were terrible and the too many kids were misbehaved and most were uninteresting in learning. He didn't say anything about gender issues, so I assume he didn't experience any, or that they weren't noteworthy.
- moistly 4y ago
  LOL all you want, but I assure you that my school district has a policy of not hiring male primary-grade teachers.
  - azemetre 4y ago
    If you're in the US then you have a slam dunk case in regards to sex based discrimination. This is why title 8 has been codified into law for over 50 years (with even more protections added to it). https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination Please contact a local attorney as this is a slam dunk case if they are truly discriminating based on sex.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      What do you win by bringing such a case? They still aren't going to give you the job. You're going to be spending years in the courtroom rather than engaged in your career. It's lose-lose. Also you're a non-working teacher with no money versus the complete resources of the State. LOL good luck with that. Don't be so foolish to think that going to court is an easy answer to problems. Court battles last a long time, especially if one party has vast resources AND/OR is an unreasonable person. My family has been in court suing each other since 1989 without end. Appeals are not completely exhausted yet. Tens of millions have been thrown away at chasing a couple of million. Lawyers have gotten rich off us. Newspaper articles have been written about our family fued. Don't be stupid.
threatofrain 4y ago
I think the community at large prefers female teachers and trusts them more around children.
- busterarm 4y ago
  It's a good thing that sex-based discrimination is illegal then. Reframe your statement around race instead of gender and it should be obvious what a disgusting opinion that would be to hold.
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave. An attitude as strong as community-wide disgust may render one morally ineffective in promoting community progression. I'm trying to point out what I think is the most important demographic of stakeholders that is responsible for perpetuating the gender imbalance in the industry.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave. something tells me that if similar discrimination was applied in the opposite direction (eg. "the community trusts male police more", or "shareholders trusts male CEOs more"), there would be government interventions to fix that "attitude".
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I'm a man working towards a masters in childhood education (elementary school) in New York. I have gotten some surprised looks, and people who assumed the teacher must be someone else, but nothing I would class as hostility. I suspect most female software developers experience much worse. Speaking of, if you think the skewed gender ratio in teaching is evidence of a conspiracy, what do you make of the gender ratio in software development and other engineering fields?
- busterarm 4y ago
  Women are more represented in software engineering than man are in elementary education. This was even more true when I started working in IT nearly 25 years ago. I don't know any women who have been automatically assumed to be a child molestor just because they're a software engineer. As for software engineering itself, it's mostly a crappy thankless job that is only offset by the pay. The hardest part of the job is not quitting. I do it because I don't want to do anything else. Anyway, you're still just studying to be the thing that we're talking about here. Let's talk after you've been on your own and working for 2-3 years. That's about how long my cousin lasted as a first grade teacher before he gave it up for construction. Also in the NYC area.
carapace 4y ago
When my mom was my age her job options were: Nurse, school teacher, secretary. Either those or be a nun. She wasn't allowed to wear pants. The "conspiracy" or "ideology", if any, was that until recently only men could get all the other jobs.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  Don't think swinging the pendulum of discrimination to the other side does anyone any good.
  - carapace 4y ago
    Of course not. But I don't see that happening here. It's not like it was 50/50 in the past and now we have 80/20, eh? FWIW, I know someone who works at a local elementary school and there are male teachers there, none of whom are being "chased out".

azemetre 4y ago

I don't really think it's a conspiracy or ideology (lol). Teachers pay extremely poor in the vast majority of states in the US. I mean a scrum expert makes more than an elementary school teacher. Wages absolutely have everything to do with it, why deny it and try to make it a political issue (lol)? Few people do the job because it's an extremely bad deal. You will make more as a bartender than you will as a teacher, with the added bonus of a restaurant manager willing to kick out unruly guests whereas a school admin will likely side with the parents. Typically the jobs that are most useful to society pay extremely bad (janitors, garbage collection, teachers, nursing assistants, dock workers, delivery people, etc). I'd checkout bullshit jobs manifesto if you haven't" https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/

willcipriano 4y ago
> Teachers pay extremely poor in the vast majority of states in the US. You hear this over and over and nobody ever provides numbers, they just assure you it's horrible.
- piva00 4y ago
  You can check some numbers, ranked, by state: https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-state-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Numbers are not going to capture the terrible quality of life at work for many teachers. Plus all the extra hours they work outside of school.
    - mancerayder 4y ago
      There's also a very long set of holidays.
      - camgunz 4y ago
        Teachers often have to do teaching work over the holidays or attend continuing education. Or they have to work their 2nd job because teaching doesn't pay enough.
      - loonster 4y ago
        Dont forget about the vacation and PTO ontop of the holidays. I would gladly take a 20% pay cut to get the same perks.
        notacoward 4y ago
        So why don't you? Your employer would almost certainly be willing (source: I have successfully gone through this kind of negotiation myself). If they're not, there are probably other employers looking for the same skills. Or was your claim merely convenient rather than true?
        loonster 4y ago
        I'm a tool designer for a small company. The company doesnt have the manpower to cover abcenses that long. I could probably negotiate that if I left for a bigger company. This would also likely require a move.
- camgunz 4y ago
  The NEA has great numbers on their website: https://www.nea.org/resource-library/teacher-salary-benchmarks https://www.nea.org/resource-library/teacher-salary-benchmar.... Let me post the US average here: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Starting | Top Bachelor's | Starting Master's | Top Master's | Top Salary | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | $41,770 | $60,381 | $45,391 | $70,279 | $76,540 | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
busterarm 4y ago
Because despite the low salary men still want to teach. The reaction to that desire to teach is suspicion. Men are literally demonized in this profession. This isn't "making it political", it's the accepted reality of the profession.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- em-bee 4y ago
  in new zealand men are practically not allowed to work as teachers for that reason. this is a shame really. teaching is the one profession where gender parity should be enforced by law because kids need the rolemodels. i spent a year in a US highschool, and the teachers i had there were fantastic. my teacher in US history was most enthusiastic, and i enjoyed the class despite failing it. that was a few decades ago. and already then it was known that teachers don't get paid well. my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it. I wonder if the people cooking at fast food restaurants or janitors cleaning bathrooms or people stocking shelves at wal mart really love it. And does loving a job necessarily correlate with being able to do the job?
    - em-bee 4y ago
      the difference of those jobs to being a teacher is how much education it takes to get there. you don't spend years in college to become a janitor. and as for love correlating with ability. it's up to the teacher-training programs to weed out those incapable of teaching. i don't know how it's done in the US but elsewhere teachers have to spend many hours in classrooms under supervision before they get their own classes. a big part of teaching is classroom management and there, love and enthusiasm make a big impact.
stolenmerch 4y ago
Teachers make 13% more than the average salary across the U.S., yet public perception is that they are horribly underpaid. No one is getting rich being a teacher, but they are certainly paid a decent wage. It's a hard job but most jobs are hard. I know a ton of school teachers. It's true they put in extra work each night but every single one of them has the summer off to relax and recharge. They are also free to work another job in the summer to supplement their salary. https://www.business.org/hr/workforce-management/best-us-states-for-teachers/ https://www.business.org/hr/workforce-management/best-us-sta...
- diordiderot 4y ago
  What about only public school teachers?
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That would be interesting to see. In my experience, many private schools actually pay less.
    - ksaj 4y ago
      My partner works at a private school where the students pay more than a typical university to attend - lots of business and celebrity parents. I was surprised to find out that some of the teachers are indeed paid less than they would be if they worked at a public school. If they've worked there a long time, then their pay is significantly better, so there is incentive to stick with it at one location. However, the perks are better. For one, if they have children, they can attend the school for free. They also get very sophisticated lunches that only cost them $5/day.
  - panda888888 4y ago
    Private schools usually pay less (they aren't unionized) but the working conditions are slightly better.
- feet 4y ago
  National average is such a massively useless metric when we have such incredible variety in cost of living across locales
giantg2 4y ago
"Wages absolutely have everything to do with it. "Everything" is too far. My male friend abandoned teaching after doing his student teaching and earning his license. It had nothing to do with pay. He took a lower paying job in a more expensive area. He said the school policies were terrible and the too many kids were misbehaved and most were uninteresting in learning. He didn't say anything about gender issues, so I assume he didn't experience any, or that they weren't noteworthy.
moistly 4y ago
LOL all you want, but I assure you that my school district has a policy of not hiring male primary-grade teachers.
- azemetre 4y ago
  If you're in the US then you have a slam dunk case in regards to sex based discrimination. This is why title 8 has been codified into law for over 50 years (with even more protections added to it). https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination Please contact a local attorney as this is a slam dunk case if they are truly discriminating based on sex.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    What do you win by bringing such a case? They still aren't going to give you the job. You're going to be spending years in the courtroom rather than engaged in your career. It's lose-lose. Also you're a non-working teacher with no money versus the complete resources of the State. LOL good luck with that. Don't be so foolish to think that going to court is an easy answer to problems. Court battles last a long time, especially if one party has vast resources AND/OR is an unreasonable person. My family has been in court suing each other since 1989 without end. Appeals are not completely exhausted yet. Tens of millions have been thrown away at chasing a couple of million. Lawyers have gotten rich off us. Newspaper articles have been written about our family fued. Don't be stupid.

threatofrain 4y ago

I think the community at large prefers female teachers and trusts them more around children.

busterarm 4y ago
It's a good thing that sex-based discrimination is illegal then. Reframe your statement around race instead of gender and it should be obvious what a disgusting opinion that would be to hold.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave. An attitude as strong as community-wide disgust may render one morally ineffective in promoting community progression. I'm trying to point out what I think is the most important demographic of stakeholders that is responsible for perpetuating the gender imbalance in the industry.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave. something tells me that if similar discrimination was applied in the opposite direction (eg. "the community trusts male police more", or "shareholders trusts male CEOs more"), there would be government interventions to fix that "attitude".
sieabahlpark 4y ago

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

I'm a man working towards a masters in childhood education (elementary school) in New York. I have gotten some surprised looks, and people who assumed the teacher must be someone else, but nothing I would class as hostility. I suspect most female software developers experience much worse. Speaking of, if you think the skewed gender ratio in teaching is evidence of a conspiracy, what do you make of the gender ratio in software development and other engineering fields?

busterarm 4y ago
Women are more represented in software engineering than man are in elementary education. This was even more true when I started working in IT nearly 25 years ago. I don't know any women who have been automatically assumed to be a child molestor just because they're a software engineer. As for software engineering itself, it's mostly a crappy thankless job that is only offset by the pay. The hardest part of the job is not quitting. I do it because I don't want to do anything else. Anyway, you're still just studying to be the thing that we're talking about here. Let's talk after you've been on your own and working for 2-3 years. That's about how long my cousin lasted as a first grade teacher before he gave it up for construction. Also in the NYC area.

carapace 4y ago

When my mom was my age her job options were: Nurse, school teacher, secretary. Either those or be a nun. She wasn't allowed to wear pants. The "conspiracy" or "ideology", if any, was that until recently only men could get all the other jobs.

lostmsu 4y ago
Don't think swinging the pendulum of discrimination to the other side does anyone any good.
- carapace 4y ago
  Of course not. But I don't see that happening here. It's not like it was 50/50 in the past and now we have 80/20, eh? FWIW, I know someone who works at a local elementary school and there are male teachers there, none of whom are being "chased out".