A new report from the Department of Statistics highlights the underachievement of young Bahamian males as a group, and has renewed concerns about the social impacts this continues to have. The "Market Information Newsletter" was released on Friday. It notes that of the 556 graduates from The College of The Bahamas this year, 409 were females and 147 were males. Of the 55 graduates from The Bahamas Baptist Community College, 43 were females and 12 were males. Of the 220 graduates from the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute, 139 were females and 81 were males.
The report also points out that a larger number of females sat the Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations (BGCSEs) this year.
For example, 2,498 females sat mathematics (98 got As); 1,952 males sat mathematics (72 got As). One thousand, six hundred and eighty-six females sat biology (74 got As); 1,208 males sat biology (25 got As). Five hundred and fourteen females sat chemistry (42 got As); 248 males sat chemistry (18 got As). Two thousand, five hundred and forty-two females sat English language (229 got As); 1,990 males sat English language (100 got As). With the exception of a few technical and vocational subjects, more females sat in every subject and a larger percentage of them received As.
The same pattern is reflected in the results of the Bahamas Junior Certificate of Education examinations (BJC).
Psychiatrist Dr. David Allen, who has worked extensively with underachieving young males, believes not enough attention is placed on these troubling trends, which have long been witnessed.
"The country is in denial, but we are facing a holocaust of young black males, who if not biologically dead, are either housed in remand at Fox Hill Prison or their brains are drugged out with marijuana on the blocks or they have chronic unemployment and are suffering from learned helplessness which means when help appears, they don't know how to deal with it," Allen told National Review.
"So our challenge is that we have to provide some kind of structure, particularly for the young males. The average age of a murderer is between 15 and 24. Now we have to get kids between 11 and 19 in some kind of special program. I suggest that at this time we need a new kind of residential care facility."
Allen has been advocating for such a facility for years, but he said it should be in New Providence and not on a Family Island, as he does not believe at-risk youth should be completely isolated. We too have seen the need for such a facility. Just over two years ago when we featured three unemployed single young Bahamian mothers living in squalid conditions, there was great outpouring from the community for them and their children. They received clothes, food, books and in the case of one of the teen boys, a summer job at a government office.
Officials at the office reported that he was eager and had performed well. But we often wondered what kind of sustained progress he and his siblings could possibly make going back to live in the same inhuman conditions: No electricity, no running water. They existed in cramped conditions that are degrading even for animals.
In the afternoons they toted water from a nearby pump on the side of the road and in the mornings they threw out their slop buckets and took baths on the side of the shack they called home. Yet they were expected to do homework and focus at school. The teen boy who got the summer job after our initial story ran begged us to move him out. Allen sees this kind of desperate plea often.
"Right now in my program of kids 11 to 19, we have 150 young boys," he said. "Do you realize that 20 percent of those at the end of the program on Sunday nights do not want to go back home? One guy says he stays with his dad and every morning he gets up, he says to him, 'I wish you were dead. Nothing good can come out of you and if you die we won't even come to your funeral'.
"The others tell me they are being chased by the gangs to join up. If they say yes they get some kind of help. If they say no they are challenged, and so our time is running out."
Allen added: "What's going to happen is if we don't get to these kids either society is going to go into repression and many of them will either just be destroyed or killed, but I believe that as a Christian you have to provide alternative structures. We have poor residential care for these kids. They can't stay at home."
Allen said some mothers in underprivileged communities just cannot cope with their young sons. He spoke of one mother who said her 14-year-old son hangs out with his two uncles who are both murderers. She fears he will take the same depressed path. The boy cannot read and he cannot write. His chance at a way out seems dim.
Allen said several years ago, there was another case of a boy he tried to help.
"I didn't have enough to offer him," he recalled, clearly saddened at the recollection. Now they tell me he is a hit man."
Allen noted that the recently released figures by the Department of Statistics refect a gross inequality in our society.
"We have a lot of young black men who are on skid row right now," he added. "We can't build our society with these guys just hanging out. It's like living death. We have more dead living people in The Bahamas than dead, dead people."
Allen was referring to the general sense of hopelessness and lack of direction among a segment of our population.
"A lot of young males in my program, they know they can't read, write and do arithmetic like the girls, so they feel shamed as being dumb," he added. "What they have left is physical prowess. So they can join the gang and use their physical prowess to make society suffer."
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