'subtle Discrimination' Termed Problem For Male Pupil

Females comprise 67.4 per cent of the professional staff in the Ann Arbor school system. This includes: -438 women and 46 men teachers in the elementary schools; -142 womcn and 116 men teachers in the junior high schools; -92 women and 131 men teachers in the senior high schools. Editor's note: Earlier this month a group of women identified as The Committee to Elimínate Sexual Discrimination in the Public Schools charged, in an 80-page report, that the Ann Arbor public schools practice sexual disc r i m i n a t i on, particularly against females. The following article views the situation from a different perspective. Because the majority of teachers are women and the "values are slanted toward the feminine side," male students are subjected to a "subtle kind of discrimination" in the public schools, says, Finley F. Carpenter, University professor of educational psychology. And a U-M psychiatrist, Dr. Donald L. Schaefer, director of the Health Service's Mental Health Clinic, believes that the'increase in "identity crisis" cases he sees and the rebellion of youth against all authority - whether represented by a male school superintendent, a father, a boss, a pólice officer or an Army sergeant - may in part be attributed to the absence of father figures both in the home and the school. "Boys," says Dr. Schaefer, "are increasingly having difficulty relating to or accepting the authority of men." Stanley Zubel, assistant superintendent for personnel in the Ann Arbor system, releases the following figures to indícate women's domination of the schools' professional staf f: Of the professional staff of 1,259 in the entire system, 848, or 67.4 per cent, are females, while 411 or 32.6 per cent are males. The professional staff includes classroom teachers, administrators, principáis, diagnosticians, social workers, nurses and librarians. But the figures don't include secretaries or clerks, who are, incidentally, mostly of the fair sex. A further breakdown: Of the 484, classroom teachers in the system's 25 elementary schools, 438, or 90.5 per cent are females, while 46, or 9.5 per cent, are male. Of the 258 teachers in the junior high schools, 142, or 55 per cent, are females, while I 116, or 45 per cent, are male. - ■- Of the 223 teachers in the senior high schools, males outnumber females by 131, or 58.7 per cent, to 92, or 41.3 per cent. Commented Zubel on the over-all pictures: "We'd like to get more male teachers, especially in the elementary schools. It's a concern of ours. The kids need a positive male image. This may be part of our problem in public education. We just don't have enough male teachers." W o m e n ' s domination, however, ceases in the schools' hierarchy. Throughout the Ann Arbor system there are 26 male principáis and five female principáis. Among the school system's administrators, supervisors and coördinators are 35 men and 17 women. If the principáis are added to their figures, the number of administrators by sex is 61 men and 22 women. The Committee to Elimínate Discrimination in the Ann Arbor Public Schools declared that it concentrated largely o n discrimination against females "because we feel that girls and women are so much more handicapped in this regard than are boys and men . . ." Nonsense, says Prof. Carnfor "T tViTnir " he says, "it's the boys who are discriminated against, particular I y in the elementaay schools. It's s u b 1 1 e , not planned. There's a 'maternal atmosphere' in the schools. The interests and values are slanted towards the feminine side. And the teachers tend to punish the boys more than they do the girls." Prof. Carpenter noted that there have been a number of studies along these Unes in Germany and elsewhere in recent years. "In Germany," Carpenter declared, "it was found that school boys tend to read sooner than the girls do, and this has been attributed to the masculine orientation of Germán schools." Not long ago, the U.S. Office of Education conducted an experiment in sexually segregated schooling at Jackson Elementary School in Greeley, Colo. The experiment was inspired by several other studies which had shown that most children with poor_school adjustment are boys. Some educators had suggested that boys get off on the wrong foot by starting school with girls. Little boys, they found, tended to develop inferiority feelings, beeause most of ten, the teachers were female and tended to favor, reward and push along the little girls. And the boys soon began to hate to go to school. In the Greeley experiment, :emales- both teachers and ittle girls- were excluded from the school's kindergarten and first grade. Boys e x p o s e d to the all-male classes taught by male teachers were found to be different. They had better attendance records, were better able to enter discussions, and were better behaved. The study was later published in the journal ' N a t i o n ' s Schools." "How." asks psychiatrist Schaefer, ''can boys b e expected to relate to men when they are older if they haven't had experience with men when they are younger?" It's only a hypothesis, Dr. Schaefer stresses, but perhaps one of the major reasons for the violence in the nation's schools and colleges and the disrespect for all authority may be attributed to the fact that so many y o u n g men have trouble relating to or accepting the authority of other men. So many American boys, Schaefer notes, are raised by i divorced mothers. and taught by female teachers in the public schools that when they finally reach adulthood, they know only how to take orders from women, but not from other men. Most of Dr. Schaefer' s suicidal male patients, he says, have had trouble relating to other men and are extremely insecure in their male ties. And during the 10 years he's been director of the Mental Health Clinic on the U-M campus, Schaefer says he has observed an increase in "identity crisis" cases. "We 're ha ving more trouble now," he says, "with questions of identity than we had 10 years ago. A lot of my patients, male and female, have identity problems, and much of our work has to do with helping them establish an identity. A lot of the male patients have a great lack of masculine orientation, and have difficulty expressing themselves aggressively." Not so the females. A recent survey of U-M Gradúate students conducted by the University's Gradúate Assembly, a student organization, found that a higher percentage of female students than male students feit that "disruptions of classes, research and other University functions are absolutely justified in many circumstances." Dr. Schaefer's views were supported by a survey done a few months ago by a group of researchers studied the family backgrounds of a variety of student militants and students arrested for creating disorders on campus and, in almost every case, it was found that the students came from broken or turbulent homes with an absent or ineffectual father, and did not have a clear masculine or feminine identity. Psychiatrie researchers T. Ishiyama and A. F. Brown recently reported in "The Journal of Clinical Psychology" on their study of "Sex Role Conceptions and the Patiënt Role in a State (next page please) I STTRTT.K DTSGRIMINATION ' . . . ( cont . ) I I tal Hospital." The researchers took 120 schizophrenic patients, half of them from "open-door good units" and the other half from "lockedI door disturbed units." The psychiatrists found that I "successful mental patients I proved to be more appropriI ately masculine or feminine I in their self-concepts and I i d e a 1 concepts than d i d I unsuccessful patients." They I also found that "the self-conIcept of the unsuccessful I males was as feminine as the I ideal concepts and self-conIcepts of the successful I females, and even more feminine than the self-concept of the unsuccessful females." In her recent book, "The Feminized Male,1' Prof. Patricia Sexton, professor of sociology and education at New York University - and a woman, makes the following appeal: "We need tough and courageous men - men who are also men of reason, tolerance, learning and good will. The shortage of male héroes and the entry into the vacuüm of minstrels, musicians, Beatles, Rolling Stones - as well as an assortment of demented anti - héroes - makes it hard to personalize for the young whatever ideáis of masculinity we may share ... The fa et that 85 per cent of the public school elementary teachers are women is an important factor. Many women actively dislike and resent males. They take their revenge where they can, in the home and the school, on the young males they control. They both pamper them and punish them. The solution is to remove boys from the jurisdiction of women, and to correet the social injustices that make many women so resentful of men . . . But Mama is only half the problem. The other half is Papa. Papa's absence from home, his abdication of authority to Mama, his weakness, brutality, or failure to relate to his son can also lead to feminization..." Not long ago, a private opinión ageney surveyed a group of 876 Ann Arbor voters and found that most of them believe that discipline and disruption problems are the foremost issues facing the public schools. Some observers note that I the sexually segregated schools of the past were far less violent than the sexually integrated schools of modern times. They also note that Switzerland's sexually segregated schools are remarkably free of violence and disnin tions, as are the sexually segregated schools in Moslem lands. "I'm ready to throw away my shorts and start demonstrating," said one male school official, after he saw the latest statistics on malef emale employment in the schools. . (over please, for related article)