It will do this country no good if we spend the next decade hand-wringing and clinging to misplaced, but well-guided ideological purity; if we produce a generation of young men who are disengaged, who are disillusioned and who feel ill prepared for the future,

thus spake Brendon Nelson, the Minister for Education in the Australian federal parliament. He was referring to an initiative of the government to increase the number of male teachers in our schools, particularly at the primary level. Finally, it seems that the lack of decent role models for our young boys is being recognised.

Think about it. When a boy is working out how to "be a man" who can he model himself on. He may rarely see his father who is at work most of the time, and the other men he sees are sporting heros and television characters. Whilst our sporting heros are real people their presentation in the media is essentially two dimensional as of course are television characters.

The anti descrimination act is being modified to allow schools to selectively recruit male teachers. Sadly the opposition have indicated that they will not support the amendment. They say

The evidence shows the real barriers to men becoming teachers and staying in our primary schools are pay, career structure and status compared with other professions

they may be correct and more should probably be done but it is disappointing that they are choosing to block the small step forward that is being taken.

Completely missing the point, women's groups have criticised the move saying there is so much pro-male bias in society that more is not needed. This is not about benefiting men it is about raising our boys to be caring and well balanced men. If feminism does not see this as a noble objective then it has completely lost the plot.

Read more in The Age.