Week 5 response to Lauren

Lauren,
I know a lot of girls who are elementary ed majors and now that I think of it I don’t know any males. I think you made a good observation about school teachers for younger grades being “women’s work”. I think it may have to do with the assumption that females are more nurturing to younger children. In our minds when a child his young he/she needs mothering. When a child advances they are then eligible to have male influences of perhaps a high school teacher who is more suited for training them to be young adults. Personally, I think this is crap. I remember growing up and having some great male elementary school teachers who made learning really fun. I also get the notion that people consider teaching younger children easier than teaching older ones. They equate it to sitting on the floor and doing arts and crafts with young kids while older ones learn more valuable things. In actuality, when one is young they learn fundamental skills of life. That old concept that everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten is kind of true. You learn basic social, academic, and interaction skills and it’s instrumental that you have a good teacher. I think that both sexes are capable of teaching either level depending on their personal interest and that it’s wrong to think there is a genetic predisposition to a career in this field.