Anecdotes, Suspicion, Discrimination, and How Gender Sterotypes Hurt Early Learning

I think this Tampa Tribune article (hat tip to the EdWonks) about the suspicions unfairly cast on male kindergarten teachers is pretty silly. For starters, it's a prime example of the non-education education story, to steal a phrase coined by Kevin. In March, a local male kindergarten teacher was arrested on charges of "sexual performance with a child," and someone at the Tampa Trib apparently thought that might cause parents and the public to fear all male early childhood teachers--a tiny fraction of kindergarten teachers in the area--are pedophiles. The article offers no evidence that parents are worried about this possibility--even the anecdotes the reporter gathers sorta run against the theme.

But there's also a serious issue here, in the underlying assumption that seems to run through the piece that no normal, healthy young man would choose to work with small children unless he had an ulterior motive. Teacher quality is a huge challenge in early childhood education, particularly for preschool teachers, who are oftern very low-paid, than for kindergarten teachers, who are typically paid on part with other elementary school teachers.

I think a major reason that early childhood workers are so poorly paid is that working with young children has traditionally been seen as a woman's job, and therefore not something that's really worthwhile or should be well paid. (The insistence of some early childhood advocates on conflating educationally-focused and purely custodial care is also part of the problem here, IMHO). I don't think improving the quality of preschool and early childhood education requires having more male teachers, but I also don't think wages for preschool teachers--and therefore quality--are going to raise near as much as they need to until we stop viewing it solely as a "women's job."