"Just...Talk To Them About Their Feelings" — Woman Explains Why There Aren't More Male Teachers

TikToker Caro Claire Burke (@caroclaireburkeee) posted a viral clip delineating why she believes there aren't more male teachers. Eschewing the notion that male students aren't as successful as female ones due to the lack of male kindergarten teachers, she argues that this phenomenon is the consequence of a larger, deeper issue.

Caro's video begins with her recording herself while she applies beauty products to her face. At the onset of the video, she touches on conversations surrounding boys in education, like why they have, for decades, been falling behind their female counterparts in school.

However, the TikToker says that a more intriguing topic of conversation is why there aren't more young male teachers signing up to become educators, specifically kindergarten teachers.

She explains that she doesn't believe he dearth of male instructors for young kids isn't rooted in salary requirements, per se.

She believes that the issue of young boys falling behind in school directly correlates with the lack of male educators. According to Caro, young men are programmed to think that being a teacher is a "girl's job" at a very early stage in life.

"Little boys are taught at the earliest imaginable age that certain traits, behaviors, jobs, careers, ways of life, are feminine," she says.

"And when things are coded as feminine, they are taught to value them less," she says. Furthermore, she shares her own experience growing up in school, stating that the boys in her class regarded male teachers in their school as "gay."

"Why? Because those male teachers were really nice and thoughtful and talked to us about our emotions," she says into the camera. She then referenced the myriad of podcast discussions she's come across where "very serious" people attempt to tackle the issue of boys falling behind in school.

As a solution to this problem, she says that these podcasters will state that there needs to be "more male thinkers," but Caro says that the issue resides at home. "If the parents aren't gonna teach the kids that communication and empathy, and support and talking about your feelings. [If these] aren't gay, then, you're not really gonna get anywhere," she avers.

"The reason why we don't have more male kindergarten teachers, preschool teachers is for the same reason why we don't pay those positions very well. It's for the same reason why turnover's really high in those jobs. It's the same reason why kids are rude to people in those jobs," Caro says as she continues her makeup routine.

"Because they're parents and society around them teaches them from the youngest possible age to not value them," the TikToker says into the camera. According to her, since the profession and the personality traits associated with the profession aren't respected, then folks in these positions aren't going to be treated with respect, even from kids of a young age.

Caro added that this same logic can is applied at the university level as well, stating that male attitudes towards colleges have decried universities as "woke" or a waste of money. According to her it's because these universities now have more women staffed and enrolled in them as students.

She referred to this as a phenomena called "male flight," delineating that industries and environments that have higher concentrations of women tend to see Y-chromosome exoduses. Forbes reported that female enrollment across the nation has been occurring for decades: in 1979 there were 200,000 more women enrolled in school than men.

And in 2021 that figure skyrocketed, with 3.1 more million women attending college than men. Caro went on to argue that solving the problem of promoting educational excellence among young boys at the kindergarten level won't be solved simply by hiring more male kindergarten teachers.

But rather, the issue runs much deeper, and the real issue needs to be addressing male attitudes at large towards the current educational system in America.

For her, it's rectifying the notion that "education is feminine" and therefore doesn't gel with masculine male students. And according to her, that's not going to happen just by giving little boys an additional year of kindergarten. Caro contends that all parents need to do is talk with their sons "about their feelings," to dispel the notion that being expressive is inherently feminine.

When it comes to higher education, many have argued that the lack of respect for college institutions is rooted in the fact that tuition costs have skyrocketed since 2005. And that the threshold for academic excellence has been lowered overall.

Like this NYU professor who was purportedly fired because students said his organic chemistry class was too hard, despite being a renowned chemist who presented a foundational, recurring curriculum in the subject in which he demonstrated a lifelong aptitude.

Furthermore, many students and faculty members in universities have expressed concerns that the number of adjunct professors have significantly increased over the last few decades, which means that tenure tracks and gradual salary increases are guaranteed to fewer and fewer educators.

Consequently, this means that working as a professor doesn't necessarily instill a feeling of job security among folks potentially interested in the position. Not to mention that many adjunct professors are paid per class that they teach each semester, with some schools capping the number of courses an adjunct can teach in the same institution.

In turn, professors hoping to earn a living as an adjunct may have to teach courses in several different schools simultaneously in order to ensure they're earning enough.

It also doesn't help that securing a degree doesn't necessarily secure gainful employment. Forbes wrote another article in 2025 stating, "Many college degrees are now useless." This could be another reason why many folks are eschewing traditional employment routes in search of more lucrative and personally fulfilling endeavors.