Education

There has been a reduction in numbers of boys going to university and girls are outperforming boys once they get to university. Fifty years ago only 20% of university students were female, as of 2001 females comprised 55% of all tertiary students and more than half of all university staff.

“An NEA (2004) survey show that the number of male public school teachers now stands at a 40 year low. After two decades of decline, just 21 percent of the nation’s 3 million teachers are men. Male elementary school teachers are even more scarce.”

“According to the NEA’s research report, Status of the American Public School Teacher, the percentage of male elementary teachers has fallen from an all time high of 18 percent in 1981 to al all time low of 9 percent today. And while men represented half of the secondary teachers in 1986 today they make up 35 percent.”

“Why do you think this is? Would it have anything to do with the fact that some statistics show that more than 70% of sexual abuse charges against men are false”

In Australia in 1983 34% of all education students at university were men, while in 2000 this had dropped to 24%.

Pru Goward stated that, "the reason men don't take up teaching is not the absence of a scholarship when they’re 18, it’s the absence of decent pay when they’re older, and decent promotional opportunities, the fact that the profession’s seen as very girly, that young men don’t want to be seen as wusses, some men fear that they might be called homosexual, and of course there’s all those allegations of men interfering with small children."

Now I wonder how Pru's logic would be recieved by women who have entered politics, business, construction and engineerin such blokey professions I wonder if girls who enter these fields are concerned about being called lesbians?

When certain people in the education sector proposed affirmative action programs to get more men in teaching Pru Goward the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner denied this was neccessary saying it is the quality and skill of the teacher that is most important. If we use this same logic we mighty say that there is no need to have an equal number of women in parliament because it should be about the skill and ability of the MP not their gender.

"The Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, is friends with the Prime Minister, but that hasn't stopped her accusing the Howard Government of social engineering today. Ms Goward is angry about the proposed men-only scholarships for primary school teacher training.

Only one in five primary schoolteachers is a man, and many schools have no male teachers. So the Federal Government is proposing a $2,000 scholarship to encourage men into the profession. Unlike Pru Goward, the Catholic Education Office in Sydney has welcomed the initiative."