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I agree with the school not allowing pregnant girls to attend school. Back when girls were homebound while pregnant there were very few pregnancies; one per year in my high school, NONE earlier than high school.
It's the permissiveness that encourages young girls to allow boys to have sex with them.
When would that be?
Because teenage pregnancy rates have never in US history been lower than what they are today, especially among 13-14 year olds. And that is for all ethnicities across the board. The recent peak (last 40 years) was in the early 1990s.But neither the peak rates in the 1990s nor the rates today are anywhere close to where we were in the 1950s.
Teenage pregnancy rates then were more than double what they are today (closing in on triple) and 35% higher than the 1990s peak in 1991. In 1957, 96.3 births per 1,000 teenage girls per <i>year</i>. Out of a class of 100 high school girls, that is 38 births throughout the course of high school (not all first births though, so the percent having children is lower). Even for girls age 10-14, the 1950s birth rates were triple what they are today.
And the key factor is that teens have sex at much lower rates. While we know today that a little less than 30% of teenagers become sexually active, consider this... In 1950, 31.1% of women married while they were teenagers (and that percent increased through 1960). By 1960, the marriage rate for female teens age 15-19 was 100.3 marriages per 1,000 unmarried teens <i>per year</i>. Just going on the basis assumption that all married teens were sexually active, there were more sexually active teenage women in 1950s then there are today.
This would seem to indicate that the policies you talk about of the past were failures in preventing teen pregnancy. Wouldn't this seem to indicate that the charter schools policies will likely fail in preventing teen pregnancy?
The primary purpose seems to be protecting the school from possible negative effects on their academic scores.
Now there's a great idea! I can almost guarantee that such a policy would be dropped like a hot potato if the guys had to drop out, too!
She's not dropping out, today isn't like when you and I were in high school, she's going back to her assigned high school.
The way to fix this is to get rid of charter schools and dirct that funding back to the supposedly inadequate public schools. I say supposedly inadequate as a general statement because I know several people who are attempting to establish a charter school here. Not because the schools are "bad" but because their very special snowflakes aren't getting the accolades the parents feel they deserve. The threat of a charter being formed has already caused the School Board to abolish the valedictorian/salutorian designation along with other changes in the way AP and Honors courses are calculated.
It was unheard of that a girl became pregnant in middle school. In high school, there was one girl in my class who had a baby, and she was taught at home for the duration of her pregnancy and never returned back to our school. She finished her education in a neighboring town that offered night classes. That baby, by the way, is now a sought after geologist and college professor in the south.
During the four years I was in high school, a total of 3 girls delivered babies; one was the above, and the other two were younger than I. They left school while pregnant and did not return. One married the father of her baby and they remain married today. She finished her education with the assistance of a tutor. She now owns her own business. The other finished in night school, same as the other, then married the father and went on to have another child with him. They stayed married for about 15 or so years.
She's not dropping out, today isn't like when you and I were in high school, she's going back to her assigned high school.
The way to fix this is to get rid of charter schools and dirct that funding back to the supposedly inadequate public schools. I say supposedly inadequate as a general statement because I know several people who are attempting to establish a charter school here. Not because the schools are "bad" but because their very special snowflakes aren't getting the accolades the parents feel they deserve. The threat of a charter being formed has already caused the School Board to abolish the valedictorian/salutorian designation along with other changes in the way AP and Honors courses are calculated.
OK, so make the FOC go back to his old school too, or punish him in some way.
I agree about the charter schools. The charter school brou-ha-ha seems to have died down a bit here, I think b/c they've been around long enough that it's obvious the kids really don't do any better in most of them.
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Originally Posted by pearly6
It was unheard of that a girl became pregnant in middle school. In high school, there was one girl in my class who had a baby, and she was taught at home for the duration of her pregnancy and never returned back to our school. She finished her education in a neighboring town that offered night classes. That baby, by the way, is now a sought after geologist and college professor in the south.
During the four years I was in high school, a total of 3 girls delivered babies; one was the above, and the other two were younger than I. They left school while pregnant and did not return. One married the father of her baby and they remain married today. She finished her education with the assistance of a tutor. She now owns her own business. The other finished in night school, same as the other, then married the father and went on to have another child with him. They stayed married for about 15 or so years.
Just because you didn't hear about this, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Girls that "moved away", etc often went out of town to an unwed mother home.
Aren't the two statements marked in red contradictory? They seem to be. First you say that teens don't have self-control and have sex as a result, then you sarcastically slam someone who thinks teens have no self-control. Isn't it the parents' job to teach their chilren that sex isnt' desirable as teens? By that, I mean sex isn't a good choice as a teen. Whether they have sex or not, it isn't wise for a parent to encourage it.
No it isn't contradictory because I never said teens have some irresistible urge to have sex. I said it's normal for them to want to have sex because they are at the stage where they're hormones are kicking in and that they should be taught how to have sex responsibly to avoid unwanted consequences.
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What is unfortunate is that it isn't.
That's really backwards.
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Comprehensive sex education isn't the school's job, it's the parents' job. Getting involved in too many aspects of raising children, schools can no longer teach children what schools were meant to teach: Reading, writing and arithmetic. It's no wonder that so many kids are "graduating" not knowing how to do any of the three.
Yes it is the school systems responsibility job because those unwanted consequences ultimately end up having an effect on society if those kids end up continuing the cycle of poverty. In otherwise the rest of society pays for the political choices that people like you make. States that are deeply red, who have high rates of teen pregnancies and poverty take in the most amount of aid which comes from other states:
And the last time I checked, sexual education was taught during the health and nutritional component of physical education. So I don't see what your non sequitur about student achievement(linked to poverty) has to do about students getting comprehensive sexual education.
Some relevant statistics:
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• Although only 13% of U.S. teens have had sex by age 15, most initiate sex in their late teen years. By their 19th birthday, seven in 10 teen men and teen women have had intercourse.
...
• The majority (86%) of the decline in the teen pregnancy rate between 1995 and 2002 was the result of dramatic improvements in contraceptive use, including an increase in the proportion of teens using a single method of contraception, an increase in the proportion using multiple methods simultaneously and a substantial decline in nonuse. Just 14% of the decline is attributable to decreased sexual activity.
...
• Compared with their Canadian, English, French and Swedish peers, U.S. teens have a similar level of sexual activity, but they are more likely to have shorter and less consistent sexual relationships, and are less likely to use contraceptives, especially the pill or dual methods.
• The United States continues to have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world (68 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 in 2008)—more than twice that of Canada (27.9 per 1,000) or Sweden (31.4 per 1,000).
....
• Many sexually experienced teens (46% of males and 33% of females) do not receive formal instruction about contraception before they first have sex.
• About one in four adolescents aged 15-19 (23% of females and 28% of males) received abstinence education without receiving any instruction about birth control in 2006–2008[12], compared with 8–9% in 1995.
• Among teens aged 18–19, 41% report that they know little or nothing about condoms and 75% say they know little or nothing about the contraceptive pill.
"Our analysis adds to the overwhelming evidence indicating that abstinence-only education does not reduce teen pregnancy rates," said Kathrin Stanger-Hall, assistant professor of plant biology and biological sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
Hall is first author on the resulting paper, which has been published online in the journal PLoS ONE.
The study is the first large-scale evidence that the type of sex education provided in public schools has a significant effect on teen pregnancy rates, Hall said.
"This clearly shows that prescribed abstinence-only education in public schools does not lead to abstinent behavior," said David Hall, second author and assistant professor of genetics in the Franklin College. "It may even contribute to the high teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. compared to other industrialized countries."
OK, so make the FOC go back to his old school too, or punish him in some way.
I agree
Just because you didn't hear about this, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Girls that "moved away", etc often went out of town to an unwed mother home.
Yep. My cousin ran away and came home pregnant and was sent out of town to an unwed mother's home. She did keep the baby, but her mom raised her dd so people did not know it was her baby until long afterwards when she married her abusive boyfriend and took her dd to live with him. She had 3 more children, but her oldest dd was abused and her grandparents ended up taking her back with them.
Unfortunately it isn't the boy who carries the baby. It's the boy who should be held accountable for providing child support no matter what age he is.
What does carrying the baby have to do with anything? You don't think a pregnant female can learn? It would seem to me, the most important thing is to keep everyone in school - both parents. Educated parents are in any child's best interest.
Just because you didn't hear about this, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Girls that "moved away", etc often went out of town to an unwed mother home.
Nope, not in our high school. People didn't "move away". It didn't happen.
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