Are you aware of Black Men Teach? It's a similar initiative in the Twin Cities, and they've made strides in teacher support/training at the elementary level. Their group could be a potential ally to M.E.N. (And strangely, back in the 90s, I had a male PE teacher and saw two men teaching fourth grade. While I was not in either of those classes in 4th grade, I did get to work with one of those teachers during my stint on the safety patrol in 5th grade.)
I read your book before my son got his first male teacher. So when I met him last year, I truly thanked him for coming to the field, quoting some elements from your work. And it was surprising to hear he was in business before he had kids, and then he realized how happy this career made him. And let me tell you, he must be the most beloved teacher in the school. You can tell when someone loves his job. He plays basketball with the kids before the class starts and participates in supervising their games at recess. Everyone loves him, girls too, but I guess the effect is additive because not all female teachers can connect with boys. And he shared with me why fourth grade, and it was because at this age, boys in particular start navigating a lot of identity and behavioral issues that, done well, will set them up for success in middle school. So he wanted to be at the beginning of that journey, and what a great thing to hear, right?
I am fully in favor of having more male teachers, because they bring a different perspective to education than women, and help to inspire men to be interested in learning. However, I do not think at this point in time that it is possible to bring this about in mainstream education, which I increasingly view as broken beyond repair. What we need is a new, parallel education system, which combines the best features of homeschooling, private schools, and the old public school system before it started failing students with declining literacy rates. I propose a system that uses a combination of AI, blockchain technology, parents playing an active role when possible, and makerspaces for hands-on learning and in-person meetups.
As a former classroom teacher with a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, I find the current argument for “more male teachers” somewhat curious and analytically underpowered.
The imbalance itself is real: teaching, especially elementary teaching, is a heavily female profession. But the leap from that observation to the conclusion that increasing the number of male teachers should be a major policy priority is often asserted more strongly than demonstrated.
The underlying problem is that several distinct claims tend to get collapsed together:
boys are struggling in some domains;
schools employ relatively few men;
therefore increasing the number of male teachers will materially improve outcomes for boys.
That causal chain is far less established than many advocates imply.
The empirical evidence on same-sex teacher effects is mixed and generally modest. Some studies find limited benefits in areas like behavior, perceptions, or aspirations, particularly for disadvantaged students. Others find very small effects once school context, family background, and selection effects are accounted for. The evidence simply does not support treating male teacher representation as a major standalone lever for solving broader male educational underperformance.
More importantly, the labor-market explanation is usually stronger than the cultural one. Teaching has become a less attractive occupation relative to alternatives available to college-educated men: lower relative pay, declining occupational prestige, weaker pension advantages than in prior generations, rising bureaucratic burden, classroom-management strain, and reduced autonomy. At the same time, demographic trends mean the profession itself is not expanding rapidly in many regions because there are simply fewer children.
Under those conditions, it is not surprising that fewer men enter teaching. One does not need a sophisticated cultural explanation when a basic opportunity-cost explanation accounts for much of the pattern.
And this is where I think the discussion sometimes becomes conceptually muddy. If the real concern is that boys lack stable adult male role models, then that is a much larger social and institutional question involving families, civic organizations, social trust, community structure, and labor-market fragmentation. It is difficult to see why the presence or absence of additional male fourth-grade teachers would be the decisive variable.
By contrast, if the concern is occupational diversity inside schools, then the policy implications are narrower and more straightforward: improve the profession itself. Better compensation, stronger professional autonomy, safer and more orderly classrooms, and reduced administrative overload would likely increase recruitment across the board, including among men.
But that is a very different argument from claiming that male teacher representation is itself a central solution to boys’ educational difficulties.
> More importantly, the labor-market explanation is usually stronger than the cultural one. Teaching has become a less attractive occupation relative to alternatives available to college-educated men: lower relative pay, declining occupational prestige, weaker pension advantages than in prior generations, rising bureaucratic burden, classroom-management strain, and reduced autonomy. At the same time, demographic trends mean the profession itself is not expanding rapidly in many regions because there are simply fewer children.
THIS!! ⬆️ no man wants to spend $100,000 on an undergraduate degree to be treated like shit by ignorant parents and get paid nothing by a school district.
We live in a hypergamous society; a man's income is directly related to his dating and mating opportunities, more so than ever. No man is willingly gonna sign up for such a handicap in finding a wife in 2026.
1. I'm pumped about the launch of M.E.N. I'm a high school ELA teacher with more than 25 years of experience.
2. A co-worker (with 3 years of teaching experience) and I run what we call the Men's Work Project at our high school. The sessions take place once every two weeks during one (rotating) period of the school day. We have about 30 boys (grades 9-12) and we are about to finish our 3rd year. Our central objective is to learn about the "man box" so that we can deconstruct it and live more complete, wholistic, and healthy lives as boys and men--making us better people, partners, and someday . . . parents. Two weeks ago we had a session all about the rape culture pyramid and how the base layers are present in our very lives. Today we will discuss the poems "Oranges" by Gary Soto and "My Stepsister's Music" by Matthew Deshe Cashion. Some elements are beautiful. Some are brutal. Thus, the work.
3. I look forward to learning and sharing with others who are a part of M.E.N.
Interesting that of the five male teachers at the elementary school where I work, 3 are immigrants and one is the son of immigrants. Not much of a sample size, I realize, but it makes me wonder about culture differences.
Those immigrants come from a background where men are integral to the education of the next generation. The West doesn't appreciate men and in fact doesn't like the idea of male role models in education. When i moved to the U.S., a lot of my friends at public schools noticed the number of men in education dwindled every year. This wasn't done consciously, but some environments are hostile to male educators. My father is a teacher and is one of the few left thinking he can make a difference. It's all women and there is no counterbalance. We didn't get here by accident.
As a male former teacher, I think this is a terrific idea. Unfortunately, tho I was trained as a high school teacher, I only taught at that level for a short time before moving into "higher" education. I just had my 86th birthday, so it's a little too late for me. But I have always believed that teacher education should encourage future teachers to experience teaching at early grade levels so student teachers can get a better taste of the range of possibilities, and maybe even discover that the real art of teaching, the most rewarding teaching, is in elementary school. And the sadness is that although for a few years it looked as if more men would be doing that, it's my understanding that this trend has faltered and that fewer and fewer men now teach in the earlier grades, That's a loss all around, and particularly for young boys who need to learn that men can be important, caring models for them.
I don't remember whose work this was based on. However, the findings are that men moved out of industries when women moved in. So calling men into education is going to be a tall order. Someone below mentioned something about coaches. Everything I used to enjoy was taught by a coach or a male teacher (the Greek gods, math, English, biology, and accounting). And some of this education came from men who were not related to me but took several other boys and me on as a project. While they were teaching their kids, they taught us as well. Richard tries but is still missing the point. There are too many risks for a guy to fill those roles now. It's easy for us to recognize the structural issues that hinder women from whatever equality we are seeking; however, the reverse is not true. Good luck Richard.
Richard, I share your concern about male representation in the classroom, and M.E.N. is a serious institutional response to a serious structural problem. But the conversation needs to go further than it currently does, on several fronts.
First, the legal environment. In the post-#MeToo landscape, as I document in Modern Masculinity for the Conscious Man, men are acutely aware that they are "just one accusation away from reputational and career ruination." The accusation need be for only the mildest impropriety to receive condemnation and retribution . And in a professional context involving children, the exposure is amplified exponentially. Until there are substantive legal reforms that restore due process protections for accused men, restore the presumption of innocence, and introduce meaningful penalties for false allegations, many men will do the rational thing and stay away. No amount of cultural encouragement overcomes a demonstrable legal asymmetry. Recruitment campaigns without legal reform are whistling in the wind.
Second, the pay and conditions issue. Teachers bring knowledge, dedication, and extraordinary emotional labor to a role that shapes the next generation. The compensation (financial and in terms of workload) is not remotely commensurate with that contribution. This isn't incidental; it reflects how the system actually values the work.
Which brings me to the deeper structural problem. As I write in my book, the institutional role of schools, within the current paradigm, is "to train people for obedience and conformity, and to make them controllable and indoctrinated." Getting more men into classrooms is a worthy goal but more men staffing an indoctrination mill doesn't constitute progress toward human flourishing. The system is designed to produce functional workers, not fully realized human beings. Maria Montessori understood this more than a century ago. Her "prepared environment" (as I explore in my essay, Humanity's Bull Market) is built on the radical premise that children's intrinsic drive toward genuine mastery is the engine of development, and the educator's role is to honor and activate it rather than suppress it in service of industrial credentialing.
The question worth asking isn't only: how do we get more men into education? It's: what kind of education are we putting them into?
My favourite teachers were men. English and Math in high school. No one blinked at male teachers. But that was the 90’s. Now when I see a man, I think “pervert”. Sad but true.
Who needs the debased, feminized modern man at the front of the class? I don’t want a current or former Pornhub customer anywhere near my kids. Trust in men is at an all time low. Make self-respect is at an all time low too. We let liberal feminists obliterate all social norms and guardrails.
So now men have wallowed in debasement for two decades. We’re all supposed to accept this as the new normal. How depressing! It worked out for upperclass men from two parent homes. The rest of our young men were psychologically chewed up by the meat grinder of addiction, the basis of our new economy.
Completely besides the point. As usual when people deflect on this issue.
How are students supposed to respect male teachers they know grew up jerking off to to Pornhub on computer screens? And who didn’t fake a stance against these companies preying on the kids? It’s impossible
Why would we allow pornographers to arm said perverts with the language, ideas and videos they need to terrorize everyone else?
And to sexually terrorize children?
What a millennial response, completely typical of progressive feminists. High school kids were talking about.
Your whole argument is completely hyperbolic. While I agree men need to have a more prominent role in classrooms, this idea that students aren’t taking their male teachers seriously due to some sort of past exposure to pornography doesn’t make a lick of sense.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Just look at the number of young women who hate men and the reasons they cite. Pornography use is right at the top.
It’s just how I feel. I don’t trust or respect men, I think we’ve allowed massive numbers to become degenerate voyeurs, unfit for the purpose of caring for others.
I think this has become a very widespread issue. I realize the purpose of allowing pornography to run rampant in the young name population is to divide people and I’m sad it’s working, but still.
Male librarians also model for boys the importance of books, reading, and self-education. I hope librarians will also be included in this new network somehow.
As a former School Social Worker and licensed clinical social worker in the child & adolescent mental health field, which is over 90% female, I'm thrilled to see this because it will benefit ALL students.
I started my career as an elementary teacher in the inner city of Detroit. It change my life and shaped my values. I became committed to education and the importance of shaping young minds and character for the future of our country and the role men play in that. I went on to get a PhD in education, was a researcher and professor of education, and I finished my career consulting with ministries of education, multinational organizations, and corporations on educational reform.
I taught at university where there were more of us. But in the humanities, where everything is much more touchy feely, we remain a minority. I was let go recently, so now I'm out of education and I have some regrets about that.
Are you aware of Black Men Teach? It's a similar initiative in the Twin Cities, and they've made strides in teacher support/training at the elementary level. Their group could be a potential ally to M.E.N. (And strangely, back in the 90s, I had a male PE teacher and saw two men teaching fourth grade. While I was not in either of those classes in 4th grade, I did get to work with one of those teachers during my stint on the safety patrol in 5th grade.)
I read your book before my son got his first male teacher. So when I met him last year, I truly thanked him for coming to the field, quoting some elements from your work. And it was surprising to hear he was in business before he had kids, and then he realized how happy this career made him. And let me tell you, he must be the most beloved teacher in the school. You can tell when someone loves his job. He plays basketball with the kids before the class starts and participates in supervising their games at recess. Everyone loves him, girls too, but I guess the effect is additive because not all female teachers can connect with boys. And he shared with me why fourth grade, and it was because at this age, boys in particular start navigating a lot of identity and behavioral issues that, done well, will set them up for success in middle school. So he wanted to be at the beginning of that journey, and what a great thing to hear, right?
I am fully in favor of having more male teachers, because they bring a different perspective to education than women, and help to inspire men to be interested in learning. However, I do not think at this point in time that it is possible to bring this about in mainstream education, which I increasingly view as broken beyond repair. What we need is a new, parallel education system, which combines the best features of homeschooling, private schools, and the old public school system before it started failing students with declining literacy rates. I propose a system that uses a combination of AI, blockchain technology, parents playing an active role when possible, and makerspaces for hands-on learning and in-person meetups.
As a former classroom teacher with a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, I find the current argument for “more male teachers” somewhat curious and analytically underpowered.
The imbalance itself is real: teaching, especially elementary teaching, is a heavily female profession. But the leap from that observation to the conclusion that increasing the number of male teachers should be a major policy priority is often asserted more strongly than demonstrated.
The underlying problem is that several distinct claims tend to get collapsed together:
boys are struggling in some domains;
schools employ relatively few men;
therefore increasing the number of male teachers will materially improve outcomes for boys.
That causal chain is far less established than many advocates imply.
The empirical evidence on same-sex teacher effects is mixed and generally modest. Some studies find limited benefits in areas like behavior, perceptions, or aspirations, particularly for disadvantaged students. Others find very small effects once school context, family background, and selection effects are accounted for. The evidence simply does not support treating male teacher representation as a major standalone lever for solving broader male educational underperformance.
More importantly, the labor-market explanation is usually stronger than the cultural one. Teaching has become a less attractive occupation relative to alternatives available to college-educated men: lower relative pay, declining occupational prestige, weaker pension advantages than in prior generations, rising bureaucratic burden, classroom-management strain, and reduced autonomy. At the same time, demographic trends mean the profession itself is not expanding rapidly in many regions because there are simply fewer children.
Under those conditions, it is not surprising that fewer men enter teaching. One does not need a sophisticated cultural explanation when a basic opportunity-cost explanation accounts for much of the pattern.
And this is where I think the discussion sometimes becomes conceptually muddy. If the real concern is that boys lack stable adult male role models, then that is a much larger social and institutional question involving families, civic organizations, social trust, community structure, and labor-market fragmentation. It is difficult to see why the presence or absence of additional male fourth-grade teachers would be the decisive variable.
By contrast, if the concern is occupational diversity inside schools, then the policy implications are narrower and more straightforward: improve the profession itself. Better compensation, stronger professional autonomy, safer and more orderly classrooms, and reduced administrative overload would likely increase recruitment across the board, including among men.
But that is a very different argument from claiming that male teacher representation is itself a central solution to boys’ educational difficulties.
> More importantly, the labor-market explanation is usually stronger than the cultural one. Teaching has become a less attractive occupation relative to alternatives available to college-educated men: lower relative pay, declining occupational prestige, weaker pension advantages than in prior generations, rising bureaucratic burden, classroom-management strain, and reduced autonomy. At the same time, demographic trends mean the profession itself is not expanding rapidly in many regions because there are simply fewer children.
THIS!! ⬆️ no man wants to spend $100,000 on an undergraduate degree to be treated like shit by ignorant parents and get paid nothing by a school district.
We live in a hypergamous society; a man's income is directly related to his dating and mating opportunities, more so than ever. No man is willingly gonna sign up for such a handicap in finding a wife in 2026.
1. I'm pumped about the launch of M.E.N. I'm a high school ELA teacher with more than 25 years of experience.
2. A co-worker (with 3 years of teaching experience) and I run what we call the Men's Work Project at our high school. The sessions take place once every two weeks during one (rotating) period of the school day. We have about 30 boys (grades 9-12) and we are about to finish our 3rd year. Our central objective is to learn about the "man box" so that we can deconstruct it and live more complete, wholistic, and healthy lives as boys and men--making us better people, partners, and someday . . . parents. Two weeks ago we had a session all about the rape culture pyramid and how the base layers are present in our very lives. Today we will discuss the poems "Oranges" by Gary Soto and "My Stepsister's Music" by Matthew Deshe Cashion. Some elements are beautiful. Some are brutal. Thus, the work.
3. I look forward to learning and sharing with others who are a part of M.E.N.
It's really pleasing to see these developments, to support and encourage not just more male teachers but more men across education. Well done.
Interesting that of the five male teachers at the elementary school where I work, 3 are immigrants and one is the son of immigrants. Not much of a sample size, I realize, but it makes me wonder about culture differences.
Those immigrants come from a background where men are integral to the education of the next generation. The West doesn't appreciate men and in fact doesn't like the idea of male role models in education. When i moved to the U.S., a lot of my friends at public schools noticed the number of men in education dwindled every year. This wasn't done consciously, but some environments are hostile to male educators. My father is a teacher and is one of the few left thinking he can make a difference. It's all women and there is no counterbalance. We didn't get here by accident.
As a male former teacher, I think this is a terrific idea. Unfortunately, tho I was trained as a high school teacher, I only taught at that level for a short time before moving into "higher" education. I just had my 86th birthday, so it's a little too late for me. But I have always believed that teacher education should encourage future teachers to experience teaching at early grade levels so student teachers can get a better taste of the range of possibilities, and maybe even discover that the real art of teaching, the most rewarding teaching, is in elementary school. And the sadness is that although for a few years it looked as if more men would be doing that, it's my understanding that this trend has faltered and that fewer and fewer men now teach in the earlier grades, That's a loss all around, and particularly for young boys who need to learn that men can be important, caring models for them.
I don't remember whose work this was based on. However, the findings are that men moved out of industries when women moved in. So calling men into education is going to be a tall order. Someone below mentioned something about coaches. Everything I used to enjoy was taught by a coach or a male teacher (the Greek gods, math, English, biology, and accounting). And some of this education came from men who were not related to me but took several other boys and me on as a project. While they were teaching their kids, they taught us as well. Richard tries but is still missing the point. There are too many risks for a guy to fill those roles now. It's easy for us to recognize the structural issues that hinder women from whatever equality we are seeking; however, the reverse is not true. Good luck Richard.
Richard, I share your concern about male representation in the classroom, and M.E.N. is a serious institutional response to a serious structural problem. But the conversation needs to go further than it currently does, on several fronts.
First, the legal environment. In the post-#MeToo landscape, as I document in Modern Masculinity for the Conscious Man, men are acutely aware that they are "just one accusation away from reputational and career ruination." The accusation need be for only the mildest impropriety to receive condemnation and retribution . And in a professional context involving children, the exposure is amplified exponentially. Until there are substantive legal reforms that restore due process protections for accused men, restore the presumption of innocence, and introduce meaningful penalties for false allegations, many men will do the rational thing and stay away. No amount of cultural encouragement overcomes a demonstrable legal asymmetry. Recruitment campaigns without legal reform are whistling in the wind.
Second, the pay and conditions issue. Teachers bring knowledge, dedication, and extraordinary emotional labor to a role that shapes the next generation. The compensation (financial and in terms of workload) is not remotely commensurate with that contribution. This isn't incidental; it reflects how the system actually values the work.
Which brings me to the deeper structural problem. As I write in my book, the institutional role of schools, within the current paradigm, is "to train people for obedience and conformity, and to make them controllable and indoctrinated." Getting more men into classrooms is a worthy goal but more men staffing an indoctrination mill doesn't constitute progress toward human flourishing. The system is designed to produce functional workers, not fully realized human beings. Maria Montessori understood this more than a century ago. Her "prepared environment" (as I explore in my essay, Humanity's Bull Market) is built on the radical premise that children's intrinsic drive toward genuine mastery is the engine of development, and the educator's role is to honor and activate it rather than suppress it in service of industrial credentialing.
The question worth asking isn't only: how do we get more men into education? It's: what kind of education are we putting them into?
My favourite teachers were men. English and Math in high school. No one blinked at male teachers. But that was the 90’s. Now when I see a man, I think “pervert”. Sad but true.
Who needs the debased, feminized modern man at the front of the class? I don’t want a current or former Pornhub customer anywhere near my kids. Trust in men is at an all time low. Make self-respect is at an all time low too. We let liberal feminists obliterate all social norms and guardrails.
So now men have wallowed in debasement for two decades. We’re all supposed to accept this as the new normal. How depressing! It worked out for upperclass men from two parent homes. The rest of our young men were psychologically chewed up by the meat grinder of addiction, the basis of our new economy.
Pretty sure perverts were around in schools back in the 90s too. It isn’t some sort of new phenomenon…
Completely besides the point. As usual when people deflect on this issue.
How are students supposed to respect male teachers they know grew up jerking off to to Pornhub on computer screens? And who didn’t fake a stance against these companies preying on the kids? It’s impossible
Why would we allow pornographers to arm said perverts with the language, ideas and videos they need to terrorize everyone else?
And to sexually terrorize children?
What a millennial response, completely typical of progressive feminists. High school kids were talking about.
Your whole argument is completely hyperbolic. While I agree men need to have a more prominent role in classrooms, this idea that students aren’t taking their male teachers seriously due to some sort of past exposure to pornography doesn’t make a lick of sense.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Just look at the number of young women who hate men and the reasons they cite. Pornography use is right at the top.
It’s just how I feel. I don’t trust or respect men, I think we’ve allowed massive numbers to become degenerate voyeurs, unfit for the purpose of caring for others.
I think this has become a very widespread issue. I realize the purpose of allowing pornography to run rampant in the young name population is to divide people and I’m sad it’s working, but still.
Male librarians also model for boys the importance of books, reading, and self-education. I hope librarians will also be included in this new network somehow.
I am about to graduate with my Masters in Library Science this weekend and the prospects for employment have got me worried 😅
Yup, "equality" only ever applies to feminists when it benefits women.
Feminism is not about equality in any way whatsoever!
It is an ideology based on nothing but hatred of men and boys and is really all about power and SPECIAL STATUS FOR WOMEN IN ALL THINGS
As a former School Social Worker and licensed clinical social worker in the child & adolescent mental health field, which is over 90% female, I'm thrilled to see this because it will benefit ALL students.
I started my career as an elementary teacher in the inner city of Detroit. It change my life and shaped my values. I became committed to education and the importance of shaping young minds and character for the future of our country and the role men play in that. I went on to get a PhD in education, was a researcher and professor of education, and I finished my career consulting with ministries of education, multinational organizations, and corporations on educational reform.
I taught at university where there were more of us. But in the humanities, where everything is much more touchy feely, we remain a minority. I was let go recently, so now I'm out of education and I have some regrets about that.