Yesterday I heard two little things that got me thinking. The conversation was between me, my ESL mentor teacher, and another TA. My ESL mentor teacher, who teaches in a public school in Massachusetts, mentioned that they have a day care on campus at her school to serve the 22 teenage mothers enrolled there. The school has something like 1000 students, I think. The TA who graduated from boarding school called Choate piped in, “Oh, those kids just disappear on 'medical leave' at my school.”
Two radically different approaches to the same sad reality. It was weird seeing them back to back. The Guttmacher Instistute, which conducts studies every year on pregnancy and abortion, found in 2002 (the latest stats) that about 4 out of every 100 girls are pregnant at some point between the ages of 15 and 17. Of this group, about 31% of girls end their pregnancy with an abortion, around 14-15% miscarry, and about 55% give birth. (FYI, girls who have abortions at this age have no obligation to inform their schools about it.) In 2002, this meant that there were nearly 139,000 girls that gave birth while in high school. In the 15-19 age range, though, about 13% of girls become pregnant. The good news is, the pregnancy rate has gone down 36% since its peak in 1990 and it looks like it will continue in that direction.
For schools, it must be quite a challenge to know how to deal with these students. The various options for these girls, I would guess, fall along socio-economic lines first of all, and secondarily according to whether they plan to keep the baby. For many girls in public school, having a baby means dropping out of high school. What I've found on the web says that while a few of these eventually get their G.E.D.s, the majority soon get on welfare and never graduate. To keep them in school, some public schools have set up day care services—a helpful offering, but also an odd thing to have in a high school. I wonder if this changes the attitudes other girls have about getting pregnant while in school. It keeps kids where they need to be, but also probably normalizes what shouldn't be normal. A third option I just heard about is Independent Study, where students make a contract with a school to meet certain requirements outside of the formal classroom. Regardless of the options, it's kids in public schools who confront this issue at its worst. It's most prevalent here, and as a result the stigma is not as severe.
On the flip side, if families have the money and decide the girl should not keep the baby (whether through adoption or abortion), they will take their daughter out of school or away to a different school for a year. I remember hearing of this back at Cambridge. This way the girl can avoid the social pressures and still continue with school afterward. What do they learn from it, though? I think it sets the precedent that parents are always there with the safety net in case I screw up too badly—a rescue mentality. For these girls, both the natural and social consequences are minimized so that life remains as normal as possible.
There are probably other options I haven't mentioned. Anyone know about charter schools?
How should schools mediate between the task of education and such personal issues as this? Or, should they at all? These questions probably lead into private v. public discussions and questions of how badly states would like their residents to be educated. It's certainly a mess of conflicting interests and natural constraints.
The million dollar question, of course, is: how can we teach kids to be responsible enough that they don't get pregnant unintentionally? Another tangle of parental v. institutional responsibilities.
July 27, 2009
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Jesse and Mary both began teaching during the summer of 2009, Jesse at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and Mary at Teleos Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, AZ. They met while working at a great books summer program together at the University of Dallas, which brought them together into the relationship they have now. Their shared love for liberal education, philosophy, and above all the pursuit of wisdom has led them through a plethora of ongoing conversations about these issues, and they've decided they need to keep track of them on paper. Here you will find their incipient reflections on education and the experience of teaching. Feel free to jump in on the discussion.
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Désolé, c'est encore en français. Quand même, tu a besoin d'entraînement. ;)
ReplyDeleteTu a fait remarquer l'«intention.» En effet c'est une question de la morale (mais pas forcément de la religion ou des lois morales que société impose): dans ce cas, il ne s'agit pas d'apprendre aux filles (aux jeunes en général) à agir en accord avec les lois gouvernementales ou religieuses, mais à agir d'abord en accord avec leur propre volonté et à connaître leurs propres ambitions. (Ça c'est le fondement de ce que tu a appelé «enseigner vertu,» je suppose.) Or, comment est-ce qu'on peut leur apprendre à agir en accord avec la volonté? comment apprend-on «à bien penser,» comme Pascal a dit?
"You made a remark about "intention." In effect it's a question of morality (but not necessarily of religion or of moral laws that society imposes): in this case, it's not about teaching women (young women in general) to in accord with governmental or religious laws, but to act finally in accord with their own will and to know their own ambitions. (That is the foundation of what you have called 'teaching virtue,' I suppose.) How is it that one could teach them to act in accord with their will? How can you teach someone to 'think well', as Pascal said?
ReplyDeleteThere are so many different factors, right? There's first doing what is good, then also doing it with the right motivation, then understanding why it's good, and then as you said doing it because you want to and will it freely. I'm not sure sure you can start (in teaching) with having people act in accordance with their will. The task, I think, is to try to shape their sense of what good character looks like, get kids to look seriously at their desires, and then work at closing the gap between what is good and what they desire. It's the last part, as you point out, that's awful mysterious. I'm really not sure how it happens.
ReplyDeleteTa traduction est assez bonne (mais «d'abord» a le sens opposé à ton choix), cependant nos pensées ne sont pas pareilles.
ReplyDeletePour ta part, il faut qu'on forme d'abord dans leur esprit des opinions de bon caractère; et ensuite, on doit leur apprendre à trouver la connaissance de soi – et où et comment la trouver. Finalement, on espère qu'ils seront capables de voir leur manque par juxtaposition; on espère encore qu'ils auront assez de courage pour améliorer la différence entre «l'idéal» et «le réel.» C'est une formule tout similaire à celle de Jean Cauvin: la connaissance de la disparité totale entre l'Éternel et l'homme nous mène au bord de la vraie foi, etc. Et après ça?
Or, je voulais dire autrement. Tu a écrit, «...that they don't get pregnant unintentionally.» La question d'intention requiert une réponse différente; ce problème n'est pas le manque de l'idéal de bon caractère. Je suppose que la plupart de ces filles-là qui devenaient enceintes savent assez bien que leurs actions ne se conforment pas aux idéals. C'est facile d'enseigner les idéals. L'enseignement des idéals s'appelle l'endoctrinement, c'est-à-dire, la formation de légalité rigide. Mais la loi est enfin impuissante. Où ces filles trouvent-elles la puissance pour réaliser la loi en actions? De leurs enseignants?