By Chong Zi (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-10 07:17

In some roles, to be a man is an issue.

Stereotyping is far from out of date in this country. When men try to defy stereotyping - venturing into women-dominated areas, they find it difficult as women try to squeeze into the world of men.

At a kindergarten in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, children play rabbits and frogs in a female teacher's classroom. It is just the sort of homey, feminine hint people expect from a kindergarten teacher.

Next door, the howls and roars of horses and tigers the girls and boys mimic are a statement on the part of the other teacher, Wu Lei.

In his classroom, he wants to make it clear that a man is in charge.

Wu has been teaching kindergarten for three years, which makes him an anomaly. Men, for the most part, do not teach kindergarten - or elementary school, for that matter.

Wu is aware that not everyone looks at him - or any man - as a born kindergarten teacher. He sensed the distrust from parents through their curious looks when he began teaching kindergarten.

His confidence in being a kindergarten teacher, and his resolve to go against the stereotype are infectious. He has four male colleagues now.

Men can make a big difference to an area dominated by the "fairer sex". Many requests by parents to move their children to his classroom is telling. They want their children to be more confident and masculine.

The influence is a two-way thing. The qualities of the children - they do not come with any preconceived notions - touches the soul of the young male teachers. They say there is more to the classroom than fun. It is also about seeing the "ah ha" moment when a student learns to read or understands a concept.

In China, Wu is one of 3,000 male teachers out of a complement of 900,000 people teaching kindergarten.

It is difficult sometimes for these men in kindergartens. When the women hold luncheons - to celebrate someone's wedding, for example, or a birthday, some of the men choose to stay away. They do not feel comfortable with the female conversation.

It is not only the low pay that keeps men away from teaching in kindergartens. Traditionally men have always been considered careless, clumsy and not suited to taking care of children.

When people meet a man who teaches kindergarten, their first question is: "Why would you want to do that?" Men who do venture into kindergarten or elementary school teaching must also contend with a society that regards them as insufficiently masculine, or gay.

It is not common to see male teachers assigned to the lower grades of a school, and people like Wu are even rarer. Parents often are surprised when they find out a man will be teaching their children or first-to-sixth graders.

While many in education extol the virtues of men at the helm of a classroom, keeping this small contingent of male teachers for our pre-school education, if not recruiting more, remains neither simple nor a top priority.

If there is a need - and I would probably say there is - there is an interesting vacuum or near vacuum.

Women and men who become teachers tend to take different paths - women majoring in elementary education at the outset and men first specializing in a content area, such as history or math. The latter results in more men in the upper primary and secondary grades than the lower.

One of the reasons it is important to have male teachers for pre-school education and elementary school is because so many students are raised by mothers and grandmothers and have very little contact with men. A lot of parents feel comfortable with male teachers and request them for their children, year after year.

Men can be good role models for students - boys and girls. The reality, however, is that women greatly outnumber men among teachers. We would like to see a corps of teachers that more closely mirrors the student population or society as a whole.

But with the pool of pre-school and elementary school teachers coming out of college remaining largely female, the situation seems unlikely to change.

A training center in Dongcheng District of Beijing, which blazed a trail in the city by recruiting men for teaching kindergarten as early as 1999, closed its doors to the "sterner sex" late last year. In the first six years, 29 men signed up.

I do not think society believes that we should expect teachers to perform the role of parents.

But our society has an increasingly high divorce and single-parent rate. Many students do not have that male influence or that male role model.

Male teachers can fill that role to a certain extent. It is generally agreed that having a male teacher helps develop a child's character and balance women-dominated kindergartens.

Male teachers play an important role in cultivating a child's boldness and strong will.

However, few of young men can withstand the bias and, more importantly, the humiliatingly low pay - 2,000 yuan ($278) a month - no matter how enthusiastic they were initially.

They quit because they cannot afford to raise a family or even have a decent meal with friends. We are still in a society where men are supposed to be the bread-winners of the family.

The low wage for female teachers, however, is not an issue and does not drive them away.

However, in other areas it is a different story. Women who are traditionally expected to cook have studiously avoided that career path professionally today.

In this traditional women's world, females are working just as hard as males to climb the ladder of success - except they are not getting there. Not many women are working in professional kitchens, most cook at home in obscurity. Unlike kindergartens, fewer women end up at the top in professional kitchens and, ultimately, fewer women become chefs. The high salary makes professional cooking attractive to men who are waited upon by their wives at home.

What is behind stereotyping? Money.

(China Daily 01/10/2008 page8)