Hacker News Reader

Comment by tenpies | Hacker News Reader

Extremely anecdotal, but has anyone else also noticed an alarming amount of anti-male sentiment in K-12 teachers? Even thinking back to my education, it is pretty clear there was not just a lack of male educators, but also female teachers who simply did not want boys to succeed.

View on HN

It was an open secret at my school. We knew which teachers were which and passed down the "secrets" of how to exist in certain classrooms. I'm sure there was similar feelings on the other side. When you're young, you tend to only externalize that which impedes you.

This.

I feel like it has been true that many teachers target boys to make them do worse for a long time. I mean, let's be honest, there are always "those people" out there. And it's probably been true for many different groups of students by the way, not just boys. There are probably teachers who don't like Asians, or what if you're hispanic? or... heaven forbid... what if you're black for instance?

But I think, for ALL these students, the more helpful question to answer is, how do we help them to successfully navigate this and other obstacles to their education? Because they are going to run up against it, there's really nothing they can do to avoid hitting that obstacle in today's world.

If we can find an answer to this question, we'd really make progress towards improving outcomes in our educational system.

It's not as anecdotal as you may think.

Here is an article about it from 2015 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/02/19/...

Interesting. I'm female but I didn't notice that. I did notice a high percentage of male teachers though. We don't seem to have this problem in my province/city. The male to female ratio is about 50/50 on my campus. I wonder how different this would be even cross-province or in the states.

No, in fact I would say the opposite. For example, having a male 5th grade teacher whose primary "fun" interaction with students was through things like playing touch football, playing chess, etc. actives that overwhelmingly appeal to males.

Of those that struggled with coursework it was oftentimes males that received a disproportionate amount of attention from female teachers. While I would say at least part of it was usually due to lack of discipline, the disparity often existed and was noticeable.

I'd have to disagree...

I think this problem exists with all teachers towards different groups of students. Again, it's not just boys affected by this sort of thing, what if you're hispanic and the teacher just doesn't like hispanics?

Burying our heads and saying that the problem doesn't exist won't help us to make progress towards better outcomes. Which is the ultimate goal here.

We need to answer the question of how to help all students successfully traverse these kinds of obstacles? Answering that question and integrating such training into their educational practice will not only help them in class, but it's a skill that I have to believe will serve them well throughout their lives.

I was speaking specifically to the perceived anti-male bias that was so strong that teachers wanted males to fail. That's an incredibly broad statement to make and one that goes further than yours here about general disfavor towards groups.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com