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Eek, A Male

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Re: Eek, A Male

#21

Post by maxawaytoolong »

axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

Does it really make any difference? I grew up in an anachronistic small town and had at least 50% male teachers from 1st grade on up. I can't say I paid attention to any of my teachers, male or female. If anything, I thought the male teachers were much bigger idiots and losers than the female teachers. In no way did I view them as "role models."

Re: Eek, A Male

#23

Post by kenjackson »

axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

I have to admit I'd go the complete opposite. I do know there are great male teachers, but in environments where the male teacher might be alone with children I am hesitant. The data bears this out, as does personal experience.

With that said male coaches or piano teachers or tutors I have no problem with, since those generally take place in plainsight of parents.

I know that really sucks for the good ones, and most are. But there are enough bad ones that the risk seems too great.

Re: Eek, A Male

#24

Post by alexophile »

[I originally posted this on a reddit discussion, link's at the bottom]

  One day, my friend Bryan was charged with the daunting task of getting Ellie, one of the older and more difficult students, to read out of a children's book for a distinct and measurable amount of time.
After some cajoling, pleading, and maybe even trickery, the two were finally sitting down at a table with myself and another student. To keep Ellie in control long enough to read more than a sentance was a complicated maneuver, but the best way (this was relayed by the teacher-coordinator person) involved being really close with him and loosely holding him in place. I don't know much about Ellie's potential conditions or history, but this makes some sort of sense. Suffice it to say, they were close, but in a totally appropriate manner (I was in a position to guage, because I was basically staring in awe the entire time)

But a few minutes in, Ellie decides he's done reading for the day. And for one reason or another, he jumps up out of the bench seat, pointing an accusatory finger at his tutor. His English wasn't super clear, and he wasn't being very loud (thank god), but I did catch "touch" and "special area."

The two of us are frozen in horror. What can you say but "I... b... no..."? Ellie maintains this outrage long enough to really get some good satisfaction out of the looks on our faces, and then he relents and just starts laughing at us.

What if someone walking by had heard? We were in a partially exposed church basement kind of area, so it's not unheard of for random people to be walking by - and the cry of abuse stirs the indignation better than most anything else - so there was a really good chance that something really awful was about to happen.

But it didn't.

So the question was, what do you do now? We tried to impress upon him never to do something like that again, but he clearly didn't grasp the full potential force of his actions. We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort, but we were too worried about how it would be perceived, so we just moved on.

Neither of us stopped volunteering because of the incident, but I'll never forget the sinking dread of that instant, that's for sure.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e7l16/i_work_with...

Re: Eek, A Male

#25

Post by juiceandjuice »

I went to the Exploratorium by myself on Sunday. I figured people would probably assume I wasn't there by myself. But I couldn't help thinking about this Asiz Ansari joke where he's talking to a kid at a museum, and finds out they have a lot of things in common, including Call of Duty on xbox, theories about LOST and stuff, and then the kid's dad leaves him there with his new "friend"

Re: Eek, A Male

#26

Post by [deleted] »

axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

[deleted]

Re: Eek, A Male

#28

Post by rgraham »

kenjackson wrote: post #23
axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

I have to admit I'd go the complete opposite. I do know there are great male teachers, but in environments where the male teacher might be alone with children I am hesitant. The data bears this out, as does personal experience. With that said male coaches or piano teachers or tutors I have no problem with, since those generally take place in plainsight of parents. I know that really sucks for the good ones, and most…

Citation? What evidence shows that there are enough bad ones? Cherry picked news stories by for-profit media?

What if all the good ones packed up and left when they were treated like predators-to-be?

Re: Eek, A Male

#29

Post by sarkozy »

axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

More men are not needed in childcare/teaching because women are naturally - from birth - better at the type of empathy and communication that is required in those fields.

It's the same reason that women excel in technology management roles (while generally being inferior in technical roles because of inadequate training or aptitude, exceptional cases like Marissa Mayer excepted).

Even a woman with average communication/empathy skills relative to other women (emphasis on 'empathy' - because this is what really separates men from women in communication) is often far better at management/planning than 99.99% of male technologists.

Re: Eek, A Male

#30

Post by varjag »

sarkozy wrote: post #29
axod wrote: post #8

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society: a). More women in tech b). More men in childcare/teaching It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none? Great to finally see…

More men are not needed in childcare/teaching because women are naturally - from birth - better at the type of empathy and communication that is required in those fields. It's the same reason that women excel in technology management roles (while generally being inferior in technical roles because of inadequate training or aptitude, exceptional cases like Marissa Mayer excepted). Even a woman with average communicati…

I guess that's why most of the successful tech CEOs are female.
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