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August 04, 2006
Boys will be boys
Brownbag lunches at the Monitor give our staff an opportunity to hear from experts. We’ve had many poets, writers and journalists speak with the staff over the years. Later this month, Bill Chapman, the paper’s lawyer, will give a lunchtime seminar on the Right-to-Know law and libel laws. And yesterday, Peter Francese paid us a visit.
Peter is a genial and knowledgeable demographer who lives in Exeter. Although reporters often call him as a news source for their stories, he last spoke with our whole staff three years ago. His charge then was to help us lay the groundwork for the Monitor’s content-driven redesign, which continues to this day, by telling us about our readers.
Peter’s main message in 2003 was that New Hampshire had a large and growing elderly population. One result of this session was the creation of a reporting beat at the Monitor on the issues of aging. Meg Heckman has ably filled it from the start.
During yesterday’s session, Peter gave us more of the same with a new twist: New Hampshire’s burgeoning elderly population is accompanied by a mass exodus of young people. Our state is getting older both because people over 55 are moving here in droves and because people 25-44 are leaving. I’ve written a column for the Sunday Monitor Viewpoints section about the consequences of this demographic shift.
While we had Peter here, we also touched on another troubling subject: the falling percentage of young men going to college. For years, the proportion of males to females in colleges and universities has shrunk. I asked Peter why. Here is what he said:
1. Eighteen-year-old men can make pretty good money in the job market – for 18-year-old men. Thus, for them, the short-term cost of attending college is greater than for girls.
2. Boys mature later than girls. Many young men say when they graduate from high school that they’ll go to college someday, but they never do.
3. College is generally seen as leading to office jobs. To an 18-year-old man, “working in an office sounds like some form of slow death.” (Women form 47 percent of the American workforce but 52 percent of the whire-collar workforce.)
4. The cost of a college education has grown disproportionately.
The problem with this trend is that whatever short-term benefits young men may enjoy in not going to college, the long-term costs are far greater. As Peter told us, there are more and more young men out there who really should have gone to college.
Posted by Mike Pride at August 4, 2006 05:51 PM
Comments
Mr Pride- your promised series of editorials on retirees and the elderly defy belief. The disparaging and parochial tone of these article is offensive, and does nothing to examine the full range of challenges facing society. If meant to provoke thought and reflection, they were successful only in provoking some of us. And strain credibility.
The three articles published in today's Monitor do a much better job of analyzing the problems facing New Hampshire. There was no blaming of any particular segment of our society- but talked about causes, effects and possible solutions. It is appreciated, because they put the entire picture in perspective. Get over it- the population is aging... and retiring in unprecedented numbers everywhere. But the boomers as a group have more wealth than any other generation in history. This money will go somewhere. Based on incentive.
It is hard to understand how someone with the resources to retire and buy a home
at age 55 is a bad thing for the highly service-based New Hampshire economy.
The assumption being, of course, that if one can afford a $400+ house, and retire, one can afford groceries and a heck of a lot more. How can this be a bad thing? A year after moving here, I find it hard not to be profoundly disturbed by your apparent message: that we are not welcome in New Hampshire. It is hard to understand after a combined 56 years of military service all over the world between the two of us, that some apparently feel we are a problem, and shouldn't be where we have chosen to live the rest of our lives.
Jon and Pam Pearse
Posted by: Jon and Pam Pearse at August 10, 2006 12:08 PM
You asdre a New England Liar who doesnt want to hear the truth.
The key root to US History is how the New England parts of the Slavery Industry took over the establilshment of Harvard and Yale philosophy departments after 1800, to establish pro-slavry philosophy departments at Harvard, Yale and the other Northeast colleges and universities,by bringing in Professors of Emmanuel Kant's philosophy from Prussia and other German prostestant states. Kant wanted to help the Prussian feudal lords go back to the eleventh century, the 1000sAD, and eliminate Arsitotle and Christianity, a goal of the old feudal aristocracy since 1600. The natural law advocats had ruled slavery illegal bt 1770. Natural Law is bassed on Aristotles Rhetoric, Nichomachean Ethics, and the 7 extant pages of Zeno, of Citrum, Cyprus.
The negative influence of the Kantist, whose philosohy influenced the elites of every power the US fpught since 1860, ruins the lives of many still today anddiencourages today's youth. Jophn Dewey had his PhD degree in the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant, and his evil system is harming young men and woprmen today and rendering them politicaly docile. All Sschools and departments of Education and their courses and degrees should be rendered legally null and void today.
Posted by: James Thompson at August 20, 2006 07:37 PM