By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Is there any problem with female teachers of English?
I have just seen a job advert ( on this website) which says a Training Centre is looking for English teachers. The advert specifies that only male candidates should apply. Just curious, what could the reason(
be? How different is a female from a male teacher of language? Is it possible that some language learners prefer one gender to another as their teacher?
11 years 39 weeks ago in Business & Jobs - China
Personally, I have no problems with female teachers.
The only problem that I could foresee is that there might be a misconception that female teachers would be subject to more physical problems than their male counterparts. With the advent of modern medicine, those things are easily reconciled.
MissA:
It's harder to be physically imposing as a woman, yes, but it's easier to seem approachable as a woman, so overall I think it evens out.
That said, I've worked with male teachers who exuded warmth and created an incredibly welcoming space; and my teenage students are slightly scared of me even though they were described by their previous guy teacher as 'uncontrollable' (a fact of which I am insanely proud).
Bona:
I get it....but I thought female teachers would be ideal for 'marketing' purposes as is the case with a lot of sectors trying to sell services/products. With the money-making-only attitude that a lot of schools and training centres in China have, females, who in general, I find more appealing than males, there shud have been a greater preference for ladies. This doesn't suggest that a lot of schools prefer male teachers, though. I have no evidence for that. Just exploring my thoughts here.
Ken55:
Well Bona, to be fair, just what kind of jobs are these requesting male only teachers? I've found in my few weeks of rigorous job searching (100+ ads a day for 5 weeks) that, in the relatively rare times the ad mentions this, they are in fact preferred when it comes to the younger kids 2 to 12 years old with males being more preferred when it comes to university or corporate situations.
To illustrate, where I contribute (I don't call it a job, I call it my contribution. Job sounds like prison that holds you for 8 hours a day and drains your soul) teaches kids from 5 to 11 (with some private lessons for a teen or two), there are about 8 teaching staff and about 15 non-teaching staff. I'm the only male teacher, and there are only 3 males among non-teaching staff.
The Chinese teachers who worked where I worked had a deeply held belief that males were innately superior as teachers. Of course, they also thought skin colour affected teaching ability, so they were pretty retarded all round. Make no mistake - every employer will have a hierarchy in their heads of what is 'ideal', what is 'acceptable' and what is 'unacceptable'.
I've seen the other way around, though, too, particularly with very young learners. Us girlie types are thought to be good with the little ones. The irony is that my partner kicks ass in a classroom of three-year-olds and I do much better with older kids.
The concept of individual strengths and weaknesses seemed pretty damn foreign to them.
stan118:
well the skin thing only comes down to the fact that the boss cant tell the difference between someone has picked english as a major and someone whos mother tunge is english, and the boss is stupid enough to rely on skin colour and take his chances, ow and it also comes down to how the school looks, so many people in china still think that england has only white people,
MissA:
The comment was flippant, but picking people based on their having white skin is no dumber than not picking people based on other skin colours - it's not like all us pasty people are native English speakers, continental Europe exists!
Picking people based on their passports, actually makes more sense in the context of your argument, and they do that too - but so often refuse to accept the fact that not all Aussies/Brits/Yanks are white. And even when they do accept that non-whites are from one of the native speaker countries, they still say that doesn't matter to them being native speakers or not. Huh? And that was the point that I'd start banging my head against something solid, repeatedly.
ive seen worse, some adverts say, white only or no black man, i have a chinese friend who is from london but she cant get a job because every boss she meets wont believe her mother tongue is english
Sounds to me like the school has X amount of positions to fill and they already have a load of male teachers. People don't just choose teachers for their mastery of the English language, it's often just a matter of "She's got nice norks" or "He's got a loaded codpiece." God knows enough of my students are aching for mArtiAn's bacon," they're only human afterall. Nope, i'm guessing that ad's just about leveling the sexual playing field and nothing more. I will say this however; in my experience men are far better teachers than women. It's because we have bigger bwrrrains. Women, it has been scientifically proven, have bwrrrains the size of walnuts.
Mmmmmmm, walnut bwrrrains.
Actually, did you know that many Chinese believe that eating walnuts makes you bwrrrainy? Honest. I'm sure it's only because they look like brains.
Any man who eats walnuts to make 'is bwrain bigger is looking for a surrogate sack to sook on.
It could also have to do with living arrangement. does the ad say the school provides shared housing? if they have one vacancy then it could explain why. i have seen some ads specify couples because only had one apartment available.
