71–80 of 174 posts
Sadly, it's difficult to compare the hand-wavy benefit (letting children interact with men) with the real cost of having something happen to your child. As a parent, I'm of the opinion that the media blows kidnappings and the like way out of proportion. Even then, it's difficult to look at the data objectively, because it's your children.
[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 Ell…
I'll never forget when my two oldest kids (now in their 20s) went to one of those early head-start kind of places when they were a kid. One week the lesson was on inappropriate touching. I know this because both kids spent the next month inappropriately touching everybody they met -- with some very humorous results. Of all the things that have changed in the last 40 years or so, this thing we've done where we've trai…
Apart from the fact that dolls of adults with penises are rather unusual and likely to produce an odd reaction - the same logic suggests my nieces are being abused by the lion from Lion king.
3 comments on this, and 200 on some girl whining that (male) geeks "hurt her feelings".
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In the 'olden' days, we used to have discipline in schools. So male teachers were extremely useful to have. Bad pupils used to get told off, disciplined, and snapped into line. Now, naughty kids get 'diagnosed' and given a cool label, get a 'teachers assistant' assigned to them - effectively praised for being naughty. I agree with your point about women excelling at empathy and communication, but I'd say the movement…
I disagree that men are better at disciplining children than women are.
I think naturally, when faced with bad behavior women will try to empathize and reason, whereas men will tend to punish/kick into line.
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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?
One of the better papers to read is http://www.ipt-forensics.com/library/female.htm It is specifically about lifting the lid on abuse perpetuated by females, and not a "cherry picked" story. Here's a site that is more numbers focused: http://www.yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html Here are some numbers: Nearly all the offenders in sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were male (96%). - Sexual Assault…
Statistically there was a 7.5% risk he would gas the students (6 million Jews/80 Million Germans)
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Additionally, it's considered OK to slam men in media, where it isn't right to do it to women. The next time you see a commercial that makes use of gender roles, swap the genders and see if the commercial would still be suitable. Most don't hold up to this scrutiny.
I agree that the phenomenon is undeniable. Commercial after commercial shows a bumbling, silly, or wrongheaded male creating a problem that an eye-rolling female armed with the advertised product is able to solve. I used to find this mildly annoying. I thought that surely our society is sufficiently advanced that we might accept roughly equal occurrences of each gender as the goats in these commercials without it see…
The commercials say a lot more about women than they do about men.
Watching the commercials, it's hard to deny that a lot of women must like feeling superior to men, and that feeling will eventually cause them to buy a product.
Why this patronizing and sexist tactic works on anyone but a 13-year-old girl is a mystery to me, but it does. I guess it's the female equivalent of the dumb college buddy movie and beer commerical.
I teach first grade Sunday School at my church and I definitely noticed that parents were uncomfortable with me being alone with the kids for a few weeks. This in spite of the fact that I'm a leader in our church and I knew a lot of the parents outside of this setting. I also had to have a background check before being allowed to help out. It was pretty annoying but the parents got over it when they saw that their ki…
"Interpersonal touch is not inherently sexual, and to treat it as such is to make it so."
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/17/kids-petition-agains.ht...
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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?
One of the better papers to read is http://www.ipt-forensics.com/library/female.htm It is specifically about lifting the lid on abuse perpetuated by females, and not a "cherry picked" story. Here's a site that is more numbers focused: http://www.yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html Here are some numbers: Nearly all the offenders in sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were male (96%). - Sexual Assault…
What are the chances of my child's teacher (of any gender) being a molester?
The answer to that, as always is: vanishingly low.
So sure, I'm willing to go along with the notion that, in the absurdly improbable case that your child's teacher is a molester, it's probably a man and not a woman.
So? Your child is orders of magnitude more likely to be abused by a known family member than by a stranger or known authority figure. You're proposing that we exclude an entire gender from a legitimate profession because of this? If you're that concerned about this tiny, astronomically improbable occurrence, I suggest you also ban your uncles, aunts, and neighbors from visiting - statistically they pose a far graver threat to your child than any teacher.
This strikes me as a similar attitude to people refusing to be seated at the front of a plane since, in the case of a crash, people in the back are statistically more likely to survive. This paranoia is fueled with the complete ignorance of the fact that the odds of a commercial airliner crashing is ridiculously low.
At least the airline seat paranoid folk aren't harming anyone with their paranoia. Yours however, does.
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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…
Not that your position is logical, but if it was, it seems like you'd have the opposite position: teachers might be alone with groups of children, but probably not with a single child, one-on-one. But piano teachers and other tutors seem like they'd often be alone one-on-one with a child. I was always dropped off by my parents (or rode my bike across town) for those kinds of things. Do parents today really cart their…
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…
Any man with the skills needed to perform well in childcare(especially) and teaching jobs are discouraged from taking those jobs, as any woman would 'naturally' be better in such roles (not to mention the significant 'pedo scare' barrier). This is the sort of latent discrimination that forces people away from the jobs they are best suited to.