Male Teachers

As my loyal readers know, I went to secondary school in Hamburg. We college students used to rhyme irreverently, "Nichts ist hehrer als ein Lehrer (Nothing is loftier than a teacher)."

Even though I had never attended an elementary school in the Hanseatic city, some school-related news lately electrified me: Today, only 12.7 percent of the staff at Hamburg's elementary schools are men.

So over the years, the nation's Prügelknaben (male scapegoats) have become female (Prügelmädchen). Parents, students, authorities, and all those who in their youth were traumatized in primary schools beat up educators. Red Baron, too joined the chorus.

©Die Zeit

The Hamburg school board wants to change the gender disparity. "It can't be the pay because it's excellent," said Schools Senator Ties Rabe (Social Democrat). "We rather believe that it is role expectations and that the view that children, family, and education are something for women is becoming more and more prevalent. This bad development we want to counteract. We want a gender balance."

 
A student campus is to be held up to twice a school year, providing information about "the varied and sometimes challenging daily work of an elementary school teacher" and studying. The first campus will be at the Bucerius Law School on November 19. The attempt to bring men into the elementary school teaching profession is also about creating role models for young students "because the boys at school should also see and understand that education is not just something for women, but also boys and men," the senator said.

Do I read correctly that education is something for boys and men? After years of more women than men studying, especially in teaching professions, do we eventually need a male quota? Is this a gender gap backward?

By the way, my best teacher was a woman to whom I owe a decent knowledge of English grammar and my love for history.

The Hamburg school board may well reconsider their Einstellung (attitude) and their Einstellungen (recruitments).
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