Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Are Compliant Teachers Exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Are Compliant Teachers Exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:


Are Compliant Teachers Exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome?

My last blog, on the preponderance of male voices and thinking running the ed-policy show, hit several nerves. Among the most interesting points made here, on Twitter, Facebook pages and blogs, was the assertion made by an Indiana teacher who calls himself Horace Mann. "Horace" suggested that both male and female teachers were subject to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, eager to please their bosses and maintain personal safety. I invited Horace to expand on that thinking. Here's his take on women, teachers, compliance and self-preservation.

Dear Nancy Flanagan,
In your latest post Is Education a Girl Thing you ponder if "the gender makeup of the teaching force impacts the profession's willingness to stand up for itself." Does the fact that more than three-fourths of public school teachers are women impact the profession's ability to stand up for itself? The answer to that question greatly depends on the treatment of women by society. Moreover, it's critical to understand the evolutionary processes, especially of our ancestral women, which have shaped all our psyches.

Collectively, females have spent almost all of their existence, in an evolutionary sense, living under the threat of