If that’s his POV, seems like he should be persuading young men to go in to the field, not talking young women out of it.
Whatever she chooses, she’s going to have to look for supportive mentors, and learn to tune certain things out. This is an opportunity for the latter.
An English teacher told D1 that she sees in the future for D1 to marry someone rich because the teacher thought she could see the future. D1 is getting married, and he is not rich. The teacher also told D1 she would be better off marrying well than pursue a major in math.
There is no lack of stupid opinion out there.
“psych is not a good choice of major for most students in my opinion. Unless you really like working odd hour for very low pay or play to get a phd. It seems to me that too many students choose it casually.”
Replied to with: "There are jobs you can get with a psych major that aren’t in the field of psychology directly.
Not all people want to choose the major with the highest paycheck. Not all people view college as a vo-tech degree."
What matters to me is that students make informed decisions, not that they need to choose the degree that leads to the highest paying job. In my experience, many students and families chose a psychology major without a clear understanding of where that path leads. My goal would be to make sure they have a clear understanding of the options that a psychology major provides. If that works for them, that is great.
@oldfort “An English teacher told D1 that she sees in the future for D1 to marry someone rich because the teacher thought she could see the future. D1 is getting married, and he is not rich. The teacher also told D1 she would be better off marrying well than pursue a major in math.
There is no lack of stupid opinion out there.”
OMG. This would have put me through the ceiling. Still, it is so stupid, it is almost comical. Wow.
To add another angle to this, students who choose a higher cost/debt college education may feel more financial pressure to chase the money career-wise (and possibly for undergraduate major, if the potential career directions are dependent on undergraduate major) even if their preferred career directions are less well paying, but sustainable after a lower cost/debt college education.
Perhaps something got confused along the conversation as I doubt your daughter would have taken the argument seriously if it’d been as silly as presented here.
(Although it seems girls have a tendency to pick lower-paying fields than boys, but it’s another debate, and not just about majoring in psychology).
An issue is that, indeed, many students take psychology as a default, some because they hope they’ll understand themselves better. In this situation, perhaps taking a few Psychology classes would be sufficient.
Some also double major in Psychology and Religion (or religious studies) in order to go to Divinity School and become ordained, which will put them in contact with mental health issues and counselling.
There are lots of fields related to psychology (organizational psychology, psychology+CS, marketing) that have nothing with counselling, and many areas of counselling not to mention mental health (including clinical degrees, PHDs, fields in medicine and nursing). Exploring the jobs outside of “counselling” is worthwhile but if OP’s daughter was discouraged so easily she wasn’t really interested in Psychology. In any case, taking one or two Psychology classes doesn’t mean she’ll major in it and can bring insight to many, many professional fields.
I guess I am in the minority, but I would have a discussion with the principal about the inappropriate, gender-based discouragement. I suspect this misogynist jerk has been discouraging girls for years. I would be furious if some HS teacher presumed to discourage one of my daughters from pursuing a career because of her sex.
Just imagine him telling some Asian-Americans that there were too many Asians in science and that they should pursue the arts or . . .
This is a good opportunity to teach your kids the difference between opinions and hard facts.
It’s also a good time to teach them that at some point they will be making up their own minds about their future majors and careers.
This was ONE person’s opinion…the teacher!
I hope he “didn’t talk her out of it” but rather make her start studying the advantages/disadvantages that come with any career choice no matter what she ultimately decides on.
There are lots of considerations in majors-- where is the majority of the work located? Would you want to live there? What kind of lifestyle do you aspire to?
If you dropped out of your profession to have kids could you get back in?
What can you do with your major?
Do you need higher degrees to get to your goal?
If two of my HS classmates and I had taken one jerky teacher’s daily refrains about us “not being fit for college” in 9th grade, none of us would have attended…much less graduated from respectable or in their cases elite colleges(Reed, Columbia). And the Reed alum would have dropped out as he almost did instead of becoming a tenured track Prof at an elite university that he is currently.
IME, best thing to do when a K-12 teacher offers up a negative opinion…especially if it’s off-base is “smile and wave” while internally thinking “How did this moron end up as one of my/my kid’s teachers?!!”.
"An issue is that, indeed, many students take psychology as a default, some because they hope they’ll understand themselves better. "
Or maybe because they just enjoy the classes?
A psychology major is unique in that it can include many science and humanities-type courses. It appeals to a broad spectrum of students. Plenty end up studying psychology with no desire to go into the field once they graduate.
I’ve worked with probably a dozen psychology majors who liked what they studied but went into business, law and technology. Just like English majors, sociology majors, history and political science majors.
So because vet schools are mainly women should we suggest women not apply? I thing a teacher should share valid info about careers, majors, etc but not biased opinions. For example a lot of people told all the negatives about being a vet to my son. We were glad he heard them and that teachers and professionals discussed it with him. He seriously thought through what they said and decided that is where his passion is and is pursuing it. Facts are good. Bias is not.
I would investigate the teachers comments before speaking to the school.
To me, it would matter a lot whether there is any truth to it, and I am not sure about that. I kind of doubt that placement in psychology is worse for women, but I am honestly not sure.
I do know that my tone with the school would be a lot more negative if I looked into it and it isn’t true.
To the question: If I were you, I would discourage your daughter from being influenced by a comment about which careers are best for her gender. Sounds like something from the 1950’s. Teacher’s issue, not reality.
On another note, as the spouse of one psychologist and the daughter of another, I am stunned to hear it described by some posters as a low-paying job. Maybe if your idea of good pay is in the millions! Personally, I consider an annual salary of between $100,000 and $200,000 to be quite good, which is typical for a psychologist with a PsyD or PhD in the New York suburbs. I consider us wealthy. I guess it’s a matter of perspective!
I was always more interested in making a difference than in making millions, anyway.
High school teachers’ opinions can be wrong, and if you take them too seriously, they can affect the rest of your life.
This happened to me.
After I had struggled with an assignment, my AP English teacher said to me, “I don’t understand why you’re in this class. Why are you making yourself suffer this way? It’s obvious you can’t write.”
The teacher left her job several weeks later (to start a graduate program at midyear), and we never talked again. But I took what she said seriously. In college, I went out of my way to take as few writing-intensive courses as possible because I didn’t want to flunk out. I even chose my major partly on the basis that it didn’t require much writing.
Then I enrolled in a graduate program and had to correct other students’ papers. And I discovered that most people – even students at a selective university – struggle with writing much more than I do. My problem in AP English wasn’t that I couldn’t write. It was that I had difficulty analyzing literature. But the teacher didn’t know me well enough to distinguish between the two problems.
A few years later, I got a job as a science writer. And I’ve been doing that sort of work ever since. It’s not difficult for me at all. But I have always regretted that there were subjects I didn’t study in college because I thought I needed to avoid writing. I might even have chosen a different major if I had realized that I was not writing-impaired at all.
When D1 was college she asked a good family friend, who was a very senior person at an investment bank, about what courses she should take if she wanted to work in IB. He said to take some psychology courses on top of her math/econ courses. He said psychology courses could help her close deals.
What an incredibly sexist solution to a (perceived) societal problem:
There are not enough men in a given profession, and it is a problem for men, so the women should get out of their way?!
The teacher would probably roundly deny he’d ever meant it this way.
@Tigerle I think he meant more along the lines of there just is an over abundance of women in the field, and you will have a lot of competition, compared to men.
I think it’s insulting to the OP’s daughter to assume she would be easily swayed by so stupid an argument.
I think the explanation MUST have gotten mixed up in the excitement of changing a major.