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Mayor Jon Mitchell has walked the walk in his efforts to restore the reputation of the New Bedford school system.
Unlike many of his West End upper-middle-class contemporaries, Mitchell sent all three of his daughters to New Bedford High School. Mitchell’s youngest daughter, Lauren, ranked number 7 in last year’s graduating class and, like the mayor himself did, she is now attending Harvard as an undergraduate.
Jon Mitchell, however, is well aware that if he had had three sons instead of three daughters, the likelihood of any of them landing as a Top 10 graduate (according to grade-point average and challenging course work) would have been slim.
That’s because when it comes to academics, either young boys are in trouble or American school systems are not responding to what they need.
Maybe both.
A few weeks ago, nationally-known motivational speaker Troy Kemp gave a dynamic talk at the Whaling Museum about how to reach young boys in school. Mitchell was right there in the front row all ears, but he acknowledged the solution is not simple.
The mayor said he started thinking more about the problem of boys failing to thrive academically when, upon taking office, he established the “Mayor’s List” to celebrate the achievements of the Top 10 New Bedford High school graduates. The school district had more quietly released that list every year before him.
In the 12 graduating classes in his six terms as mayor, Mitchell said that female students won 9 of the 10 spots every year except one. In that year, the mayor said that he believed a grand total of two male students finished in the Top 10.
Mitchell’s bleak assessment was a little exaggerated.
The actual breakdown of the Top 10 New Bedford High graduates for the last 12 years, released to me by the city, shows that girls are strongly dominating. But they are not romping quite as overwhelmingly as Mitchell depicted.
Since the Class of 2013, girl scholars at New Bedford High have taken nine of the top 10 spots three times, eight of the top 10 three times, seven of the top 10 three times, and six of the top 10 three times.
That’s a little bit of a spread but girls are always the clear majority. Boys never garnered more than four of the top 10 slots in any of those 12 years, and only twice, in 2021 and 2022, did a boy take the No. 1 spot. Those two boys both had Asian-American names, and I say that only because New Bedford does not have a statistically large Asian-American population, and I think it’s worth laying that fact on the table.
I thought for a bit that the situation might be different at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational High School, where some of the hands-on machine maintenance and craftsmen courses might be more attractive to boys who were both good with their hands and academically sharp. But I was wrong.
On short notice, Superintendent-Director Mike Watson and his administrative assistant, Maria Fredette, were able to pull together GNBVTH’s Top 10 list for the last six years. Again, the list was dominated by female students. Twice, eight of the top 10 graduates at the Voc-Tech school were girls three times, seven of the top 10 were girls and once six of the top 10 were girls.
Lest you think this is a New Bedford thing, consider the following national statistics that go far beyond the high school scene.
Some 58% of all undergraduate college students in 2020 were young women, up from 56.6% six years earlier. The situation is the same for post-graduate degrees.
According to the American Bar Association, women last year outnumbered men in law schools for the eighth year in a row. Some 56% of law students are women, compared to 43% who are men. And women comprised 55% of first-year medical students. Interestingly enough, the acceptance rate of women at medical schools was slightly lower than that of men, 45% to 47%.
Women are also outstripping men in master’s degrees (67% of all degrees) and doctorates (55%). Men continue to outpace women in math, computer science and engineering majors, with women only earning about one-third or fewer of those degrees. But they are gaining on men.
What does all this mean?
The Forbes article cites a recent Pew Research study in which 34% of young men said they didn’t finish college because they just didn’t want to, and a slightly higher proportion of men than women said a four-year degree was not necessary for the job they wanted.
Some craftsmen fields that have been traditionally dominated by men — say, a plumber, electrician, construction worker, trucker — can earn more money than a teacher or a social worker or research assistant. Perhaps the drift of boys and young men away from academic pursuits to more hands-on work is a matter of the kinds of jobs that attract boys versus girls.
But these numbers are so overwhelming that I think it’s more than that.
Nativity Prep, a structured, nurturing, traditional all-boys’ middle school, brought Troy Kemp to New Bedford. His big message was that boys are simply wired differently than girls, and that things like competition and strength are attractive to them.
Teachers and educators have to find the best way to reach boys within their own natures, he said. “They need a safe environment that lets them take a risk,” he said, “so they can learn from their mistakes.”
Not everyone is sold on the idea that boys are in crisis.
New Bedford Superintendent Andrew O’Leary, the father of three boys going through the high school, said he is not a fan of what he calls “crisis framing” when it comes to education.
“I fear the broader idea that there’s a unique male crisis is somewhat repetitive and unproductive,” he said, referring to a forum on the same subject that he said was held at the Whaling Museum in 2011.
O’Leary also said that if we looked at the grade-point margins between the No. 8 academic achiever and the No. 18 achiever, the margins are slim, and the gender spread is more equitable.
In fact, he said the overall academic achievement is not statistically nor historically significant in his analysis.
Fifteen years after the 2011 forum on a male academic crisis, we still have a gender imbalance in the workforce that disfavors women, O’Leary noted.
Maybe so, Superintendent O’Leary. Maybe so.
But I’m worried about what’s going on in high school curriculums and assessments that so disfavor boys in academic courses. Either the numbers don’t lie, or high school and college academics are indisputably more attractive to girls and women these days. Maybe that’s a natural evolution of interests we are moving toward. Or maybe that’s a phenomenon that either has to be adjusted or reframed a bit for young boys and men.
Email columnist Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
What are the contributing factors…to both sets of results? WHY are boys sliding and girls are achieving? Aside from girls getting opportunities that were denied them in the past, what is missing for the boys that has them check out…and early in life? Where are they going and what are they doing instead of learning and playing sports? And how is this impacting how boys and girls relate to each other? Please keep going with this concern, as the article just scratches the surface.
You know full well that boys have consistently been pushed aside for girls in just about every category for the past several decades. I’ll tell you this….. I don’t believe it’s by accident. Just look at the last 20 years or so. Girls have been steadily rising in status in business, law, entertainment, government and lately even sports, everywhere. I mean, yeah, great for them, but not at the expense of our boys. There are all kinds of programs meant to empower girls so they are more confident and successful. Have you been online lately? If these girls get anymore confident they’re heads won’t fit in the screens. I don’t see that confidence with the boys. If you doubt what I’m saying just turn on your t.v. or watch your social media. If it’s news on television, no doubt it’s a beautiful woman telling you the news, weather or sports, if not even the subjects of them all. Take a look at women’s basketball. Every time I see a basketball game 50/50 it’s a women’s basketball game. Even in commercials now it’s the female basketball players trying to sell me a sandwich, sneakers or insurance. And quite frankly the ones I’ve seen aren’t the best role models for anyone. Online the girls, for crying out loud even grown adult women, what some would consider elderly are dancing in front of a camera with no embarrassment. As if they are Hollywood stars. Turn on a sitcom though and most likely the dad is going to be a buffoon and the boy….. well, he’s just like his old man. I don’t have answers but as I said I believe it’s by design. I won’t go into that any further but I can tell ya part of the problem as far as the boys go, at least in my case. I wasn’t given any opportunity to influence my son in any direction other than exactly what his mother wanted. And if I tried, boy oh boy I wasn’t going to be able to see him unless it was supervised. Court approved. So maybe let’s start with that.
Where were your comments when the woman was always a dumb blonde. The problem is now that men are experiencing what woman have gone thru, they are like little boys having a tantrum.
Although there are woman gamers, the men/boys now a days gotta be gaming, gotta have their special chair. God forbid, don’t interrupt them. You wonder why boys are not achieving. If you want to generalize, there you go. I can do anything and I am a girl who grew into a strong woman.
Little girls become strong women. We can do anything they can do. We’ll do it while raising children, working and housekeeping. Balancing budget, family and friends. You go girl…….don’t let their comments take our hard earned glory away.
As one of the Asian Americans males mentioned by this opinion piece, I will say that my academic performance was highly attributed to my upbringing. Coming from an immigrant family, my parents always stressed the importance of education in forging better career opportunities. I would argue that pressure is what propelled me to excel academically. We should consider what environments we foster for students and it might help us understand the bigger picture
Well said Phillip and good for you, may you achieve everything you strive for. By the way, I’m a girl that grew into a strong woman.