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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> Re-entry after winter break has not been easy for him. The rules and restrictions of school – Sit Still. Be Quiet. Do What You Are Told, Nothing More, Nothing Less. – have been grating on him, and it shows.

> The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern schooling are killing my son’s soul.

As an asian, I can't muster a lot of sympathy for this line of reasoning. Nobody would accuse asian countries of catering to girls rather than boys, but the schooling over there is even more "sit down, shut up, and do your work" than it is here in the U.S.

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This is an important point and I feel torn about it.

On one hand, I agree with the idea that forcing kids to be quiet and do their work will be unhealthy for some of them. (Certainly I know people who were unable to deal with the system and left as soon as they could.)

On the other hand, I also know plenty of people who grew up in very high-pressure situations (some from stereotypical first-generation asian families, some not) whose souls turned out just fine, thank you. I hate the pervasive notion that such families were somehow crushing their children's "true self" or whatever.

My guess is that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Smart parents and ideally-designed school systems will adapt to kids' needs: allow the hard workers to grind boundlessly, let the meanderers meander without (while still trying to challenge them and spark their curiosities).

Regardless, I don't see how that conflicts with what the author wrote.

> The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern schooling are killing my son’s soul.

I think you can say that regardless of where the same style of schooling is practiced and regardless of the gender.

Rules are fine. They teach discipline. Rules that are created to make large groups of children manageable are not fine. Children aren't cattle and require personal attention and a rule set that matches their character.

>Rules that are created to make large groups of children manageable are not fine. Children aren't cattle and require personal attention and a rule set that matches their character.

That can only happen at home. Catering to needs of every child individually at school is not easily doable. One child's need may be disruptive to another or the entire class. Expecting teachers to pander to such needs is plain wrong. In a class, the teacher should focus on teaching basic skills. enforcing some rules that makes this easier is fine in my books. If your child needs special attention, hire a private tutor, home school or send them to piano/fencing class or whatever it is that interests him/her.

There's a lot of tension over discipline in the US. It stems back 60+ years; I haven't done a great deal of study on the matter, but I say that from the (large) amount of fiction and non-fiction I've read and the social expectations thereof.

Anyway, I don't buy that discipline is inherently harmful to boys. Men have traditionally been involved with military/paramilitary type situations, which demand discipline. It's profoundly gender essentialist to assert that boys have to move around more. Also, dumb (c.f. History). It's profoundly valuable to learn how to sit down, be still, and concentrate on a subject matter you don't like.

The real concern is the authoritarian attitudes and regurgitation for the sake of pleasing the power figures. It can break someone's mind to be turned into a perfectly molded authority-pleaser.

China: 59% female teachers.

Japan: 62.7% (primary), 54.8% (secondary) female teachers.

USA: 87% female teachers.

I think you're right, the order doesn't matter so much as where the order comes from.

I'd love to see more male teachers. But I also think there's an (perhaps unconscious) sexist undertone that we need more male teachers because we can't expect boys to see women as proper authority figures.

First, I do think some of it is not just teacher demographics; I think the learning style promoted in American schools serves girls, in the aggregate, better than it serves boys. But more directly addressing your post, I don't think the point about teacher demographics is that boys can't respect women; I think it's that they're less likely to see women as role models.

I always tried to downplay this stuff -- race-blind-and-gender-blind and all that to treat all people equally -- but I have a son and three daughters now and in spite of us never really making it a Thing, gender is a Thing for them. My kids were curious about video games but my daughter got turned off by a lot of them because "how come so many of the characters are boys." No matter what I said, she couldn't get past that. She felt like video games weren't for her. Is it crazy that boys might subconsciously feel the same about school? "If it's for boys how come all the teachers are women?"

I think the sexist undertone is actually toward men - most male teachers of children (pre-high school) are viewed as weird or pedophiles.

Are your kids male teachers taking flak for this?

I see people on HN writing this all the time, but as the parent of a middle schooler and a high school student who just left middle school:

There's a 50/50 split between men and women in my kids' middle school, and nobody is weird about guys teaching.

There were plenty of guys teaching at their elementary school as well. My daughter had a male teacher in 2nd and 5th grade.

I went to Jesuit high school, and more of my teachers were men than women. Again: no weirdness at all.

Is it true that "most male teachers of children" (or even many male teachers of children) are viewed as "weird", or is this just a meme on message boards?

Then give me another reason to explain why educating has become largely a female profession in America?

Before high school I think I may have had two male teachers. One was fired for making "inappropriate comments", the other was considered weird because he patted kids on the back and said good job. It is not just a meme, it's a reality.

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