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Comment on Misogyny is thriving in our schools. Why aren’t we doing more?

i don’t know how things are in Australia, but i do know how misogyny is so common in American schools. you can’t think of it as being individual failures on behalf of the teachers. you have to think of this as entire system of patriarchy that selects for individuals who are less likely to resist it.

firstly are the weed out systems:

a school teacher needs 4-6 years worth of higher education to be eligible to teach meaning a school teacher is more likely to come from a wealthier, more conservative background
a school teacher is paid poverty wages, making them more reliant on spousal support, creating a soft reinforcement of traditional gender roles
teachers are hired by administrators who are usually men, men who can have unaudited privilege in the system of patriarchy, creating bias in what they consider “professional” for a teacher towards someone who will fit into this overall system

then there’s the reinforcement systems

you are genuinely correct that most teachers are more progressive when it comes to social issues, but they are also making poverty wages meaning they’re more reliant on the job. they’re more desperate and therefore less likely to upset the apple cart
teachers are not the only people who interact with kids. administrators are usually who operate the punishment system in a school. this punishment system creates an interplay between the nurturing mother stock character and the disciplinary father stock character. the disciplinary father stock character in his role will often hand children mysogynistic views very directly.

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Ilandar@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

a school teacher needs 4-6 years worth of higher education to be eligible to teach meaning a school teacher is more likely to come from a wealthier, more conservative background

Most Australian university students have their study 100% funded upfront by the Australian government and only pay it back over time if they earn above a minimum threshold, so the connection between socioeconomic background and university education isn’t as strong as in the US (though it definitely still exists).

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Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

a school teacher is more likely to come from a wealthier, more conservative background

I couldn’t find stats for Australia, but in America teachers are statistically more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, so I don’t think this is supported.

It is also worth noting that, though I couldn’t find anything on Australian educators’ political leanings, teachers are one of the most highly unionised workforces in the country, and our centrist party (the one the media and many in the general public would call “centre-left”, like your Democrats) has explicit ties to the union movement.

a school teacher is paid poverty wages

In Australia they’re paid quite well. It doesn’t scale as highly for the average teacher as it does in many other highly educated jobs, but the base salary is pretty good. There’s the important caveat that teachers are largely expected to spend their own money on classroom supplies, though.

teachers are hired by administrators who are usually men, men who can have unaudited privilege

Teachers in Australia are hired by the department based largely on very impersonal factors like qualifications. There’s not a huge amount of room, at the level of classroom teachers, for that kind of bias to have as much of an effect. What more personal decisionmaking does happen is done largely by principals, who are former teachers themselves. Because hiring is done at the department level, principles can get involved in decisions like who gets a job at which school, but the fact that they have a job at all is much more impersonal. The promotion and hiring of principles and other non-classroom positions may be a different question.

That said, I’m not disagreeing with your main point. It is a systemic failure. At a scale far larger than merely within schools.

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DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If you don’t know how things are in Australia, why are you entering the discussion?

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- Cube6392@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  to discuss how these things happen in other parts of the world with similar roots of anglocentric patriarchy. i’m not trying to drive the conversation, just provide “here’s what happens in another part of the world, maybe it will help analyze your systems”
  
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