China is hiring more male teachers to stop the pussification of boys
Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.
In Zhengzhou, a city on the Yellow River, schools have asked boys to sign pledges to act like “real men.” In Shanghai, principals are trying boys-only classes with courses like martial arts, computer repair and physics. In Hangzhou, in eastern China, educators have started a summer camp called West Point Boys, complete with taekwondo classes and the motto, “We bring out the men in boys.”
The view that there is an overabundance of female teachers that has had a negative effect on boys has, perhaps predictably, led to a backlash. Parents have accused schools of propagating rigid concepts of masculinity and gender norms, and female educators have denounced efforts to attract more male teachers with lavish perks as sexist.
“We have a more intuitive sense of children’s needs,” said Li Yue, 36, a kindergarten teacher in Fuzhou. “It isn’t the responsibility of schools to teach boys to be boys. It’s the responsibility of parents.”
Chinese education officials, for the most part, appear to disagree. While men are scarce among the ranks of public schoolteachers worldwide, including in the United States, the gender imbalance is especially pronounced in China, where women occupy four out of five teaching positions in urban areas, according to a 2012 study by Beijing Normal University.
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Meanwhile, pussification of men continues elsewhere (i.e., in the West).