I have been told twice in a fortnight that I would be a good school teacher. These people have told me that I have a calm demeanor and that this would make me suited to the profession. The problem with this is that although I might have these qualities, not having children of my own, I know nothing of the skills necessary to be able to keep a class full of children, much less teenagers under control. I bet that within six minutes of me stepping into a classroom, it would be classified as a warzone by the UN and several things would be on fire. In short, putting me in front of a class full of children would be an unmitigated disaster and nothing short of abject chaos and calamity would ensue.
The truth is that there are some people who are built for the job of teaching. Teaching is a vital and necessary profession which is best expressed by people who have a passion for the job, to impart knowledge and wisdom up their students, and whom we've seen through multiple incidents do the job with a contingent risk of harm to their person.
Teaching is a profession which is necessary and hideously important to the maintenance and betterment of society; not just through the improvement of the notional labour stock of the nation but also to some degree, about inspiring the dreams and hopes of people. Teachers are very much part of that web of people who help to build and polish the character of young people.
The problem is that in addition to being a difficult and undervalued job, which is already subject to self-selection processes, as teaching involves the responsible supervision of other people's children, it is also subject to cancellation processes. Granted, there are people doing the job who probably shouldn't be but by the same token, there are people who might be good at the job who will cancel themselves from the available stock of labour because as a society we deem that there are people who probably shouldn't be doing the job.
Let me ask the obvious question to anyone with daughters. Would you allow me, a male, aged between 25-65, within 10 feet of your daughter, who is under the age of 18? I would wager that the answer in most circumstances, is "no".
The simple an unavoidable fact is that every single male who enters the teaching profession, is immediately viewed with suspicion; with very good reason. The world is not a nice place and the motives of people are equally not nice. The truth is that no sane parent would actively put their daughters in the same room as a man for extended periods of time. They might put their sons in the same room as a man for extended periods of time but that's mainly because there is a base assumption that due to a physical difference in power between boys and girls, boys are nominally better at being able to fight back. Yet this is what we ask of parents when they send their children to school.
If you multiply this base assumption across several million people, then repeating this same experiment thousands of times should lead to a situation where you will end up with very few male primary school teachers and a slightly higher proportion of male high school teachers; where the latter is still biased towards the STEM subjects. Even looking back upon my own time as a school student, I had no male primary school teachers and only a handful of male high school teachers.
Then overlay this base assumption with findings of various Royal Commissions into the abuse of children and the incentive for men to enter the teaching profession is pretty low.
Imagine a scenario where a 16 year old girl makes an accusation against a male teacher. In don't even care what the accusation is, just the thought of the risk should inform us that she should be believed. However, even if the accusation is 100% baseless, the just the fact that an accusation has been made is enough to ruin someone's career.
If I can lay out a scenario in just one paragraph, then it stands to reason that every man who has ever even thought about teaching as a profession must have at some point, also laid out this scenario in their mind. One of the benefits of being able to game things out in theory, means that you never have to work them out in practice. Re-ask the question. Should a male aged 25-65 become a school teacher? In most cases "no". Therein lies the inherent problem.
Teaching might be seen by society as one of those professions which is plagued by gender stereotypes. Whether or not it is seen as a female profession, is actually secondary in this case as to whether or not it can even be a profession that males can enter, let alone whether they should or not.
The question about whether or not I would become a teacher, is a very very hard "no". It doesn't even matter whether or not I'd be good at it (which for the record I do not think that I would be), the fact is that the possibility of being accused of anything is enough to completely rule out the entire profession as a viable option.
I have worked in the Commonwealth Law Courts as a court recorder; I have sat in police recordings with people who in all likelihood have committed murder; I have also been sent as a court recorder to military and international court proceedings. I can tell you that the average profile for a murderer is literally anybody. Without exception, quite literally everybody is capable of killing someone else given the circumstances. I think that deep down, not only do we all know this to be true but we know it of other people. Given this as a fact, are parents really likely to believe anything said by a male teacher when that is the case? Again, the answer quite rightly is a very very hard "no".
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