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.
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 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?
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.