I came across this report about pregant teenagers last week, but I found it so astounding I just didn't want to touch it. However, I post it today after reading a post that the Peoria Anti-Pundit has about what schools need to do with pregnant girls (notice #5 on his Wish List). Can somebody please send Bristol down here to talk with these young ladies.
115 Pregnant Girls at Chicago High School
115 Pregnant Girls at Chicago High School
A total of 115 girls are pregnant at Chicago's Paul Robeson High School. The entire school only has about 800 girls, so that means that 1 out of every 8 girl is pregnant.
There is no specific reason why Robeson High is experiencing such a high rate of pregnancies amongst its students. Robeson principal Gerald Morrow cited the young girls' home environment as being a factor, "It can be a lot of things that are happening in the home or not happening in the home, if you will."
There is work being done to improve the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood to Robeson High. Developers are working on turning a one-time crack house into a day-care center for student use.
There is no specific reason why Robeson High is experiencing such a high rate of pregnancies amongst its students. Robeson principal Gerald Morrow cited the young girls' home environment as being a factor, "It can be a lot of things that are happening in the home or not happening in the home, if you will."
There is work being done to improve the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood to Robeson High. Developers are working on turning a one-time crack house into a day-care center for student use.
9 comments:
When I started teaching, pregnant girls were sent home--for good--no more educational opportunities. Remember that just a few years earlier, pregnant married teachers were also sent home and told they could no longer teach once they became mothers. A decade or so before that married women were not allowed to teach in 150. When pregnant girls were finally allowed to finish school, I home-tutored them (paid for by the district) before they were able to come back to school. I came to feel that maybe the tutoring was not such a good idea--that most girls were able to come back relatively soon--or that missing a semester wasn't that much of a hardship. I think the tutoring became a rather significant expense for the district.
I used to volunteer for a program called Mentoring Moms, through the Children's Home. During that time, I witnessed many young ladies who got pregnant in high school, go on to complete high school and some even make it to college. It takes a strong support group to help them make it through.
I agree--the girls often do much better than do the teen-age fathers--I have seen girls straighten out their lives so as to be good mothers. Of course, there are, unfortunately, others that fit the stereotype--so that most don't look beyond those to the young women who accept the responsibility for their own lives and that of their children. The girls I tutored came out of my own classes--I thoroughly enjoyed those relationships that expanded the usual teacher-student bond. Eventually, , also, taught my first "tutored" baby when she got to high school--that was special as I could tell her stories about when she was a baby.
Emerge, please tool over to my blog and read the reply I posted. I don't think ever that just because a girl gets pregnant, she'd have to leave school. I do however think it's a problem and as such, District 150 needs to educate young girls and boys on the ramifications of having a baby so young. Your opinion is important to me. Thanks.
AntiPundit in many instances you are saying the things I want to say, but then I remember I want to at least try and play nice. :)
I feel what you are going for with the pregnant teens, but I don't think the hard line is the answer. However, whenever I am in school and I see a young lady pregnant I NOTICE - I SEE IT, I THINK ABOUT IT.
I get concerned that sometimes these young ladies are making it look too easy. They often have their support team (through agencies), they are often popular, and they have baby showers. Fun stuff right?
When they have the child, they show back to the school with cute strollers, pretty little baby doll and it makes an impression on other girls. They begin to think that's not so bad; I'll have somebody who loves me; I can get my own apartment; do me - be grown.
For these reasons, I would like to not see pregnant girls at school; I think it glamorizes the situation.
But school age pregnant girls need an education, so they can hopefully one day go to college, or be gainfully employed so they can support their children. And when their child is ready for school, hopefully the young mother has learned enough to teach their child better.
If they are all together in one location, no doubt it would be a nurturing environment that other impressionable girls would again look at and want to be a part of.
I used to have a friend whose mother always said having sex will make you blind and kill you. We told her her Momz was crazy and lying. My friend had a child in 10th grade and grew into a bitter woman who is still stalking her babies father to this day. It's mothers like that and girl friends who think they know better that make it imperative that kids are taught about sex and the consequences in school.
Girls need to be in high school, regardless of their condition. Perhaps a middle school girl, not so.
Is there a extreme problem in this area at District 150??
I attended a wonderful lecture at ISU this afternoon by Jonathan Stacks, who is a social reform advocate who focuses on reproductive justice. The topic was the need for comprehensive sex education and how much farther we have to go as a community to provide this to our children. I attended because my dissertation topic involves sexual risk taking behaviors in teenage students, but I really had no idea how current legislation at the federal and state level really inhibits effective education.
Comprehensive sex ed. is virtually non-existent; it's nothing like we received as teens. Teenagers are having sex. Period. They're engaging in oral and anal sex at much younger ages because they feel they won't get pregnant and/or remain virgins. Parents, like me, who very much WANT their kids to learn as much as they can about sex ed. don't really have much choice...it's been so sanitized it's not even worth it.
In my little school of less than 4 students, we have two boys who are fathers (one is 17, one is 15). In my 4 short years in the program I can, off the top of my head, come up with 10 students who became parents in that time. (We average about 35 kids a year). And our program serves predominately white students.
Emerge, I agree with you, that allowing pregnant teens to attend classes with the rest of the student body glamorizes pregnancy. It's also a distraction to the other 7 out of 8 girls who aren't pregnant. All too often the students who don't get in trouble and try their best in school get short changed because all the attention is focused on trouble makers, bullies, drug dealers, and the like.
Pregnant teens should be able to continue their education, but separated from the mainstream and in a program geared toward life planning and succeeding as a parent. It can be turned into a positive for all involved.
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