Reply #64: I have a theory about lack of respect for teachers being rooted in sexism.

[Sparkly]

Yes, sexism. It's just a theory, lest anybody get upset!!

When I was in elementary school, which wasn't all THAT long ago, teachers were nearly all women, and principals were all men. The work of raising children -- including teaching them -- was considered "women's work." And "women's work" was secondary, even seen as something for "pin money."

(In fact, when teachers asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, they only asked the boys. Girls knew, however, that we could be secretaries, nurses, teachers, or ballerinas, but it was more likely we'd just be "nothing," meaning wives and mothers.)

Some of that's changed, of course; but it's not gone entirely. It still happens that TV ads show women, not men, doing cooking, cleaning, and child care; and in the real world, I suspect more women than men are K-12 teachers (although not in higher ed); and more important, the further away from the classroom you look, from the school's administration to the state dept. of ed to federal dept of ed., the more power there is to decide and mandate what happens IN the classroom. That is at LEAST a left-over from the days when men were telling women what to do. The relationship between male doctor and female nurse, male boss and female secretary, male "head of household" and female "housewife," was the same model as male principal and female teacher. The little woman must be told what to do, what not to do, etc.

On top of that, more recently, the powers that be (in administration and politics) of either gender need to cover their butts when students aren't succeeding in school. Surely it's not about the lives the children have out of school -- nothing to do with socio-economic issues or the fact that the kid's community is a drug-infested high crime ruin or that their parents can barely feed them and can't be home when they return from school etc. etc -- NO, it must be the teachers!!!

It's like a factory manufacturing widgets, and along the assembly line the hammers are missing the nails and smashing the widget on all sides, the joints are barely holding together, it's off-balance and falling apart but at the last stage, when the widget is supposed to get painted red, it falls apart -- so everybody yells that there's something wrong with the painting process. (Does that make sense?)

Anyway, just my two cents. I've been in schools where they rationed CHALK from the teachers, as if they were going to abuse the chalk somehow!! It's just infuriating.

:rant: