Tag Archives: Teacher

Commentary

How discrimination against men in schools increases male unemployment

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Friends don't let friends vote Democrat

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics via Red State via Michelle Malkin)

First, the unemployment rate for men is higher than for women.

Story here in the ultra-left-wing UK Guardian.

Excerpt:

Complacency and “general hopelessness” have been blamed for the failure of young British men as research reveals that underperformance in school and university is now creeping into their working lives. A report published today by the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank says male graduates are far more likely to be unemployed than their female counterparts.

Figures show that the economic downturn caused an increase in graduate unemployment from 11.1% at the end of 2008 to 14% by the end of last year. But when the figures are broken down by sex a stark picture emerges of 17.2% of young male graduates failing to find jobs compared to 11.2% of women.

[…]Bahram Bekhradnia, the HEPI’s director, spoke of the “general hopelessness of young men”. “The increase in unemployment that occurred between 2008 and 2009 is striking. For those graduates who have not found work it is a personal tragedy – a really bad start to their working lives,” he said.

He pointed to forecasts that suggest women will dominate the professions within 15 years. “That has all sorts of implications for things such as family creation, child-rearing and so on. The situation in some countries is even more extreme. An American woman told a conference I attended of the fury of black American women who found it impossible to form relationships with men of the same race with similar educational attainment because black American males weren’t going to university.

[…]Around half of the difference can be put down to subject choice, but the rest is unaccounted for and could indicate discriminatory forces.

[…]…the underachievement of men in school, university and adulthood is now an international phenomenon and it is one that is being increasingly studied in psychology.

Why are men struggling to find jobs? Well they are not doing very well in school.

Consider this article from Pajamas Media.

Excerpt:

  • In 2006, the high school dropout rate, which was 1.5 points higher for girls in 1970, was 2 points, or almost 20% higher, for boys (10.3% vs. 8.3%).
  • A 2007 study led by James Heckman of the University of Chicago asserted that “the pattern of the decline of high school graduation rates by gender helps to explain the recent increase in male-female college attendance gaps.”
  • The gender gap in college attendance for at least the past several years has returned. In late April, Uncle Sam’s Department of Labor told us that after three years of almost equal gender enrollment by high school graduates (2006, 2007, 2008), 202,000 more women than men from the class of 2009 went on to college. Women make up almost 55% of the current year’s freshman class.

The problem is that there are almost no male teachers and also that boys don’t learn well in co-ed classrooms – they get distracted by girls. The curriculum is not suitable for boys, who learn better with different materials that focus more on things that boys like, like wars, guns and adventures. Boys learn better with male teachers and all-male classrooms because they need male role models in order to succeed.

Consider this article on male/female teachers.

Excerpt:

The organization MenTeach, a Minnesota organization dedicated to increasing the number of males working with young children, posted a survey on its Web site showing that males constitute less than 20 percent of America’s 2.9 million elementary and middle school teachers. The 2008 survey, based on source data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed even more drastic differences among different grade levels:

  • 44 percent of America’s 1.2 million secondary school teachers.
  • 18.8 percent of America’s 2.9 million elementary and middle school teachers.
  • 2.4 percent of America’s 685,000 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers.

Most women want men to be strong husbands and fathers, so they’ll need to make sure that men have jobs. In order for men to have jobs, they’ll want to oppose feminists who discriminate against men in the education system.

News

Melanie Phillips asks why incompetent teachers can’t be fired

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Melanie Phillips

Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Wes Widner)

Excerpt:

For years, head teachers have complained that one of their main problems was that the terms of teachers’ contracts with local education authorities meant they were unable to sack those who were not up to scratch.

Now Panorama is apparently reporting the shocking fact that, instead of being removed from the profession, dud teachers are merely being recycled by being given good references in exchange for agreeing to look for work in alternative schools.

According to Mick Brookes, leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, this is a common practice which he says causes heads serious problems.

The classroom teacher unions, however, think it is perfectly justified.

Well, there’s a surprise. In fact, it is an absolute betrayal of the children for whom school represents their one chance in life.

And a bit later:

The most successful teachers have always understood that children need to be inducted into a body of knowledge, to be taught in a structured and disciplined manner, to be corrected when they make mistakes.

But for decades, the predominant educational ideology has ordained that children effectively teach themselves, with teachers taking a back seat as mere ‘facilitators’.

What children feel about themselves has been deemed to be more important than what they know.

Achievement was bad —because it made others who didn’t achieve feel bad about themselves.

This led to the collapse of the teaching of reading and the dumbing down of virtually every subject on the curriculum. Indeed, it eroded the very basis of teaching as the transmission of knowledge.

The first thing we need to do is pass a law that allows teachers to work without having to join a union. The best teachers will be able to command much higher salaries when they don’t get dragged down by the union. That should cut into the union’s political power, and then we may finally get some decent school choice laws passed – like vouchers – so that parents can choose where their children go to school. That will create pressure on schools to perform – and that means that bad teachers will be fired.

News

Michigan unionized teachers protest having to contribute to their own pensions

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The Blog Prof is a great Michigan-based blog and the proprieter is all over this story.

Excerpt:

Thousands of teachers are gathering in Lansing today to protest having to pay 3% towards their generous pension and healthcare benefits. Michiganders are waking up to the reality that public employees, and especially K-12 teachers in this state, are enjoying extravagant reimbursement for their services far in excess of the public sector such as 1) higher pay than their private sector counterparts, 2) better job security than anyone in the private sector, 3) healthcare benefits far in excess of the private sector, and 4) pension benefits that are far in excess of the private sector. Fact is, here in Michigan teachers are paid better than any other teacher in the country per unit Michigander income…

Check this out:

And this:

And this:

Remember, I am PAYING FOR THIS NO MATTER WHAT.

Public schools are funded by compulsory taxation that takes money out of my future family’s coffers so that we have FEWER CHOICES about how we have to will serve God by raising godly children. It’s money taken away such that my future wife will have fewer options and opportunities because she will have less to spend as she sees fit. And we will be forced to pay for our neighbor’s kids to learn values that we don’t hold. Ridiculous! I didn’t make this money to give it away to secular leftist indoctrinators with guaranteed jobs and pensions.