More male teachers needed to 'shape boys' masculinity'

"The scarcity of male teachers may cause boy students to lack masculinity," said a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Weng Guoxing, who suggested raising the ratio of male teachers in primary and middle schools, Qilu Evening News reported Sunday.

Nowadays, the gender ratio of teachers is imbalanced in primary and middle schools, especially in kindergartens, said Weng. He took Qingdao for example: in October 2011, a media survey showed that male teachers account for less than 20 percent in the city's nine primary schools and 30 percent in 10 middle schools.

Statistics show that in nationwide kindergartens, there are only 10,000 male teachers among the total 1 million teachers.

Weng attributes the imbalance to the following reasons: imbalance in normal colleges with a rate of men to women as 15:17; many male graduates from normal colleges prefer not to be teachers; the income of teachers is lower than many other professions.

He suggested to control the gender ratio to 1:1 when enrolling teachers. "For disciplines that especially need male teachers, standards should be lowered for male candidates."

Xie Shijie, another CPPCC member echoed his suggestion, saying that the scarcity of male teachers will greatly compromise students' emotional quotient because female teachers' care and love is not enough to shape all children's integral personalities.