This may seem impossible to you, but it’s true. Sixty-five — again, 65 — of Timken High School’s 490 girl students are pregnant. That’s a number confirmed by Principal Kim Redmond, whose staff, in less than a week, will inherit a problem it had no part in causing.Whose fault is it that more than 13 percent of Timken’s girls are with child? Some would say fault-finding isn’t a fruitful exercise, but in this case, it’s critical. Suspects range from movies, TV and video games to lazy parents and lax discipline. Only one thing is sure: Schools don’t impregnate children.
“This has gotten to horrible proportions,” said Redmond. “I wish I knew the answer to why it’s happening.”
She’s not the only one who should wonder. McKinley High’s numbers aren’t rosy, either, and its culture is just as ripe for trouble. I recall a day there last spring, while waiting for an English class to let out, that a roomful of kids lauded a boy, no more than 16 or 17, for having become a “dad” the night before. A paper on the kid’s desk suggested he might struggle to spell that word.
Teenage pregnancy is a strong predictor of adult poverty; at least one study confirms that teenagers who become pregnant average two years fewer of education.
At GreatSchools.net, one Timken student defends the school, saying that it has a bad reputation only because of the "wanna-be rapper, gangsters, and the all american-sports players." And now, because of the girls who have chosen early sexual activity and parenthood over education.
Update: A provocative link, via Instapundit, suggests the girls getting pregnant are the normal ones, and perhaps the system should be restructured so that teenage pregnancy isn't a guarantee of dropping out of school and low-income jobs:
It's time someone praised and defended reckless teenage girls and young women who behave badly, dress provocatively, engage in risky sex, and get pregnant. They are the normal ones. The rest of us are the deviants. They are behaving in the most natural way. The rest of us are mutants......A woman's body is at its fertility peak between the ages of 17 and 23. So when young women advertise or flaunt their sexuality they are being driven by a force far stronger than the Judeo-Christian ethic. They are driven by the power of peak fertility and a million years of evolutionary biology. Nature has programmed them for pregnancy, genetic diversity and keeping the species going. A big job...
...A healthier society would allow women to have children earlier than they do now. At 32, no matter what people want to believe, the reproductive system is far less robust than it was 10 years earlier. Our aim should be to have children born into a culture where there is plenty of support for child care in addition to the mother, thus liberating mothers to more fully exploit the possibilities that advanced society can offer them.
As I said, provocative.
Posted by kswygert at August 23, 2005 06:25 AM