To Sir: Where are you?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2011 Population Survey indicates that men make up 18.3 percent of elementary and middle school teachers and 2.3 percent of preschool and kindergarten instructors, down from 2007 pre-recession proportions of 19.1 percent for grades 1 to 8, and 2.7 percent for preschool and kindergarten, reports Sarah Sparks in Education Week.

High school educators are more evenly divided: 42 percent in 2011 were men, down from 43.1 percent in 2007. The diminishing status of teachers generally, coupled with continuing sexism against men working with children, may be discouraging men from entering the field. Chanté Chambers, who recruits at historically black colleges and universities for Teach For America, sees the trend play out among high-achieving college students. Education's low status is "a major barrier" to bringing more men, particularly black men, into the field. "They're coming from communities that are not necessarily affluent, so it adds to pressure to be that breadwinner, to have financial stability," she explains.

According to Shaun Johnson, a former D.C. teacher and now a professor at Towson University, "Teacher-bashing is a new national pastime ... and [one] which you could argue is highly gendered. [Teaching's] status as a profession isn't going to improve in this climate; it's only going to get worse."

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Teachers And Their Unions

One of the segments from “Waiting for Superman” that stuck in my head is the following statement by Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter:

It’s very, very important to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. Teachers are great, a national treasure. Teachers’ unions are, generally speaking, a menace and an impediment to reform.

The distinction between teachers and their unions (as well as those of other workers) has been a matter of political and conceptual contention for long time. On one “side,” the common viewpoint, as characterized by Alter’s slightly hyperbolic line, is “love teachers, don’t like their unions.” On the other “side,” criticism of teachers’ unions is often called “teacher bashing.”

So, is there any distinction between teachers and teachers’ unions? Of course there is.

People who disagree with policies traditionally supported by teachers’ unions, or support policies that unions tend to oppose, are not “anti-teacher.” That’s kind of like arguing that fighting against environmental regulations is tantamount to hating members of the National Wildlife Federation. It’s certainly true that the rhetoric in education can cross the line (on both “sides”), and extreme, motive-ascribing, anti-union statements are understandably interpreted as “bashing” by the teachers that comprise those unions. Some of the discourse involving unions and policy is, however, from my (admittedly non-teacher) perspective, more or less substantive.

So, you can “love teachers and disagree with their unions,” but don’t kid yourself – in the majority of cases, disagreeing with unions’ education policy positions represents disagreeing with most teachers. In other words, opposing unions certainly doesn’t mean you’re “bashing” teachers, but it does, on average, mean you hold different views than they do.

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