The False Cult of Effort, the Gender Gap, and K-12 Teacher-Bashing
While the U.S. presidency is rarified air, the presidential election often reflects the best and worst of the American character.
As the country sits in the cusp of the end of the first black president’s administration and the likelihood of the election of the first female president, what does the current election show about the lingering privilege of being white, male, and straight in the U.S.?
Being black, brown, female, gay, or transgender requires perfection while being white, male, and heterosexual allows any transgression to be excused.
Hillary must be perfect (her email controversy is oddly identical to millions of erased emails from private servers under George W. Bush, although that is of no real concern to the public or the media, for example), but Trump’s admitted behavior as a sexual predator is swept aside as just a man being one of the boys.
Yes, the glorious sanctity of the office of president must not be sullied—although the Republican Party has elected Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and W. Bush, a who’s who of unethical personal and political behaviors?
And in this dynamic of privilege we find the cult of effort—the implication that all these powerful white males are in power because of effort, because they deserve the success, earned the success.
Recall that Trump built this off the pittance of an inherited few million. …
On a smaller scale, then, is the K-12 teacher, a profession trapped in the cult of effort and the gender gap.
Having spent my career in part as a K-12 public school teacher and now as a tenured full professor, I have witnessed first-hand a powerful and ugly dynamic.
First, let me work backward.
My university has only about 30% female faculty, which reflects a male norm (linked with a white norm) of The False Cult of Effort, the Gender Gap, and K-12 Teacher-Bashing | the becoming radical:
