福建师范大学外语学院　2001级英教(1)班　欧阳乾龙

It is estimated that the number of female teachers accounts for 60-70% of the staff at primary and secondary schools in some cities. This fact mainly stems from three factors: Social stereotype, material rewards and personal ambitions, although there might be varied and thousands of causes to explain the acute shortage of male teachers.

Firstly, expectations from parents and society prevent excellent male academic achievers to serve in the education circle since teaching has long been considered a woman’s job, typically. Therefore, many male teachers-to-be don’t dare or bother to take the risk of becoming someone sharing undesirable social unacceptability.

Secondly, low salary and long working hours is urging men, who have always, been regarded as the main financial sources of their families, to leave their teaching career to strive for better financial turnouts and also more promising future in business domain. For example, being an English teacher in a high school means earning a regular, stable but miserable ￥2000 monthly salary and pay rise is almost out of reach while doing business in a foreign-invested corporation offers males a more stimulating payment. People in business might not be easy to get a handsome salary at the very beginning, but the pay might jump from ￥1,500 to ￥7,000 or even higher if their professional performance deserves. Nevertheless, you can hardly achieve that money goal for being a high school teacher, to say nothing of primary school teacher, unless you take bribes.

Thirdly, traditionally, boys are supposed to be ambitious about wealth, status, power, reputation, etc. It is almost every male’s dream to own enviable wealth, high social status and share much power and reputation, which could offer themselves a sense of self-importance to satisfy their desire or vanity, as it is called. Thus, men become comparatively more ambitious than the females. What’s more, teaching could hardly let them go that far. So males just simply give up teaching career as one possible ways to achieve their success.

In fine, the “male teacher burnout” is chiefly due to the counter-forces of social stereotype, low payment and personal ambitions.