A young mother holding her babies feet.
Are High Schools Encouraging Teen Pregnancy?
With daycare centers located on high school campuses and a plethora of other free services made available to teen parents, one high school teacher and Washington Post columnist is left asking, Are schools making it too easy for teens to get pregnant? Take a look at the teen pregnancy trend at one Virginia high school where 70 of the 2,211 students have children or are expecting. Washington Post, 12/14/08
Why are schools being blamed for scenarios beyond their control?
Schools aren’t enabling or encouraging teen pregnancy by offering services that will allow each of the teens access to an education, ludicrous. Public schools that offer such services should be touted as trailblazers.
By accommodating teen moms, we can better prepare them for life beyond the walls of k-12 learning. Without our assistance, teen moms face an uphill battle that many of them will not be able to overcome academically and eventually in the job market. Regardless of your views on teens and their relationships, do we not have a responsibility to every child, including teen moms?
What do you think?
You are correct. We do have a responsibility to teach and educate every child, including teen moms. However, I also believe that children and their parents have a responsibility as well.
Having said that, I do not believe schools should be responsible for paying for services outside of the scope of their intended responsibility. We must maintain that our number one focus, at least in a public school setting, is to educate our children with reading, writing, and arithmetic. Additional curriculum focused on preparing students for either furthering their education or job seeking is also appropriate. But raising our student’s children is not the responsibility of the public school system. That, I believe, is the responsibility of the family, the church and the community.
On the other hand, I do believe that when other agencies work with and within our school system, it can be beneficial to many needy students.
Again, my main concern is when we create an overlap of services, everyone trying to do everyone else’s job. Let’s focus on core educational curriculums within the schools and open our doors to other agencies whose responsibility it is to serve the same population.
Thanks Romy for the reply. It is interesting how you assumed that I was advocating that districts to pay for this in-house daycare.
Funding could become symbiotic. Do you think staff members would pay for a service located on campus that would provide daycare services? Could/would the organizations you mentioned (e.g. churches) sponsor individuals enrolling in the program on campus?
I agree with you about funding and the strain it places on an already strained budget. I don’t, however, have solutions to re-direct these families in crisis and by not providing some type of service we are leaving generations of certain families behind. That seems to fly in the face of the legislation, No Child Left Behind.
It takes a village…
Also, it also takes invested adults to mentor and encourage these teens to continue to press forward towards goals that provide security and responsibility for their futures. Education to WAIT before they repeat their situation or choose to further complicate it!
A program is just a program. The on-campus childcare provides the opportunity for these teens to succeed, but will they take the challenge? Do they GET IT?
I feel that today’s do whatever you feel like, superficial mentality is far larger than what childcare alone can solve. There must be accountability. Paradigm shift in mentality. So, what is the next step?