Are we seriously undermining the more male qualities of our school-age children in the Czech Republic?

It's a question which was amply dealt with in today's splendid edition of Lidove noviny (in Czech, "the people's newspaper") about the percentage splits between XX and XY Chromosomal Units teaching and holding down managerial positions the Czech educational system.

For those who wish to read the original article, have a gander at pA3 in today's broadsheet or touch this if you're based abroad and have a grasp of the Czech vernacular (hello to all former Czechoslovaks, exiles from big bad Communism, all 1938ers, honourary Czechs and Slovaks, and to all their progeny -- dobry den!).

What I didn't really get a sense of from the grab-bag of articles on offer were perhaps some of the reasons why men are reluctant to get their hands dirty with Cesko's (don't you just love that nickname?) school network.

1) No money...no honey: Whilst this isn't a particularly masculine problem, it's a known fact that lower Czech pay grades in the educational system produce strong repulsive fields that continue to keep Czech (and Slovak) males at least 3 football pitches in distance away from our nation's primary, elementary, and secondary schools. You'd think that with the more masculine penchant for spartan lifestyles and frugal lifestyles, contrasted with the more feminine "tendency" to lavishly spend on various preening articles and other close-fitting cotton body huggers (surely to attract the tongue-wagging local male), that the hue and cry would rise up from Eve rather than Adam's side. But no matter, you get the picture.

2) Extraordinarily gradual career trajectory: When dealing with the preciously delicate nature of our nation's youth, there isn't that same opportunity to hack, slash, and obliterate your rivals as there exists in the present-day Czech realm of cerny byznys. As such, men -- despite their otherwise stellar qualifications for same -- aren't afforded the same opportunities in educational fields to make those same gigantic, unheralded leaps forward in the Czech business universe. Ergo, they shy away from the teaching trade. Pity.

3) Who wants to be grabbed by the short 'n curlies?: With the plethora of female colleagues proliferating in our Czech primary and secondary schools, most male teachers would feel intimidated at being so massively outnumbered. Especially with some of those matronly battleaxes (read: former KSC stalwarts) from the hammer and sickle tricolour period, I don't know of too many idealistic men -- even if they hail from more rural areas -- who have the brass cojones to take on some of these hardened babicky (= grannies).

4) Red-era peer pressure: Mass social conformity (not including those exceptions to the rule = dissidents like our winsome former President Havel) is one of our nation's sad legacies of the former regime. As such, it takes a young bloke of upstanding, staunch inner-fortitude to step into the breach and absorb the persistent accustions which inevitably be levelled against him about being in the minority. With only 27% of males teaching in our schools (versus a whopping 8 out of 10 XX-chromosomal units, egad!), the iron-walled resistance to the long-benched, gambac-guzzling, football-lazing, female-disrespecting crowd is not a characteristic embodied by most impressionably young male teachers on the make. Still with me?

5) Inability to properly filter criticism: The societal ridicule a young Czech male will face as a result of his resolute choice to remain an elementary school teacher will rain down so forcefully upon his head that I fear the dire consequences of those not built to deal with this humiliation. My thinking? It'll take a man of such Ghandi-like inner-fortitude to withstand the daily jibes -- not to mention the confidence-flagellating caustic asides his parents and grandparents will issue forth from weekend and holiday visits to his village -- that the growth rates for male teachers shall continue to stagnate.


I'm not going to expect any miracles on this front soon, and neither should you. However, here's a lost of advantages from having more males in the school system, as I see it. The mere fact that our Education Minister is a strapping young man, Ondrej Liska/Andre Fox, bodes well for the immediate future, provided he doesn't get gobbled up by the fatcats on the Lesser Side and sucked into the ODS/CSSD vortex of maniupulation:

** having male teachers early on during their formentive years will offer Czech young females a different side of the male character other than the authoritarian one they typically receive at home.
** if the young man in question doesn't isolate merely his "feminine qualities," he might succeed in shedding light on more "masculine" literary subjects for his student during the course of a Czech literature lesson.
** more men on school staffs will give female teachers less time to concentrate on being catty with their peers, avoiding the strife which several careerist Slovak imports to our Czech school system usually bring.
** a greater number of male teachers in our schools serves as a "stat jacker" (= statistics booster). It'll be useful when the time comes for EU handouts. We'll earn a larger share, which our politicians will "spend wisely."
** having more robust male teachers will ultimately knuckle down on the pernicious (and hopeless!) stereotype some citizens continue to harbour about the virility of the male teacher, thereby modernizing Czech society.


The bottom line?

More male teachers will bring in more money for Cesko from Europe and will be better for our students.

Is there a better result than that?


I wish you the most glorious of weekends,
Vamos a la playa,
ADM