Teaching Matters:   Many people would have been somewhat surprised by an ad campaign in the press and on radio last week.

Instead of the usual exhortations to part with cash for a particular product, these advertisements were aimed at persuading young men to think about taking up a career in primary teaching. "If you're thinking about a challenging and rewarding career," the voice advised, "think about teaching. Primary school teaching: a career with a difference."

This idea is the brainchild of the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, who wants to promote primary teaching as an attractive career for both men and women - and it is a good idea. Thank goodness a Minister has finally recognised and decided to tackle this issue.

Most people will accept that all jobs should be open to both males and females, and of course primary teaching is open to both. Anyone who wants to be a primary teacher just has to get about 460 points in a Leaving Certificate that includes honours Irish. Not an easy task, I accept, to make it into the top 20 per cent of Leaving Cert students, but for those who do, they are almost guaranteed a place in a college of education.

Today almost 90 per cent of those who do so are female. Thirty years ago about one in three primary teachers was male. There is no doubt that the maintenance of single-sex colleges of education into the 1970s operated as a measure of positive discrimination in favour of males. But particularly since the colleges went co-educational, the number of male teachers in primary schools dropped rapidly. To be fair the world hasn't exactly come to a stop because of this but the pattern is worth noting.

On present trends the last male teacher will leave our primary schools in 2035. Every probable cause for this exodus of males has been examined. Everything from the points needed and the Irish language requirement for getting into a college of education to the fact that girls outperform boys in the Leaving Cert has been advanced as a reason. But the feminisation of teaching is a worldwide trend, so we can hardly claim that the honours Irish requirement is influencing the gender balance of teachers in Australia or France.

Salary and promotion prospects have also been put forward as reasons, but even where these are more favourable than in Ireland we still see young men going elsewhere when it comes to choosing a career. Indeed in relation to promotion it is clear that although men are in a minority they are not a disadvantaged group.

Is this a problem? From a narrow teaching point of view the answer is almost certainly "no". In spite of conventional wisdom that boys do better with male teachers and girls with female teachers, there is evidence from England that both boys and girls get better academic results with female teachers. So the argument often put forward that women teachers can't relate to male students just doesn't hold water.

Why then should we even try to get more males to consider teaching as a career? School has a huge influence on children not only in terms of academic learning but also in terms of how they come to view the world. Teachers don't just teach their pupils how to read and write. A great deal of what is learned does not come from a book but is learned by children from their own school experience. For example, by working together in school they learn to be part of a team, to consider different points of view and so many other social and life skills.

In today's world many children are learning that early childhood education and care is a woman's job. More and more pupils are raised in single-parent families, usually by their mother. More and more children attend childcare, almost exclusively provided by women. And now more and more children are taught in primary schools by female teachers. And just to reinforce it . . who usually attends parent-teacher meetings? Yes, you guessed it.

I believe that what most people would like children to learn is that the care and education of children is a job for both men and women. But unless something is done we will have a self-fulfilling prophesy on our hands and I suppose the only place that the Minister for Education can make a difference is in the schools.

The Minister's campaign will not be easy. It needed far more effort a generation ago to persuade men that they could actually wash a cup, make a dinner and hoover a house. This generation of "new" men needs to be shown that they can actually play a part in the education of children, but this will be difficult if their only experience of teachers is female. All children benefit from good male role models and schools will reflect society more closely if staffed by both males and females.

But it might take more than advertising.

Valerie Monaghan is principal of Scoil Chiarán, Glasnevin, Dublin