Posted on 06/28/2008 11:36:30 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The ideology of teen pregnancy
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: June 27 2008 19:59 | Last updated: June 27 2008 19:59
Every year at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, three or four girls get pregnant. But not this year. This year 17 did. When Time magazine alleged that some of the girls had a “pregnancy pact”, reporters and cameramen from around the world descended on the fishing port. Whether the pact was a teenage dare or a practical arrangement by the girls to give each other moral support has been hotly debated. No one disputes, though, that many were delighted to discover they were pregnant. “Sweet!” one of them shouted in the school nurse’s office. The school superintendent admitted: “They were not trying very hard not to get pregnant.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Homeschoolers “get” the joke.
As far as Ms. wintertime is concerned there is no such thing as a good public school or a good public school teacher.
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1) No government school can be respectful of First Amendment Rights and freedom of conscience.
2) No government school can be religiously, culturally, or politically neutral.
Therefore...I do not approve of any government school even if they are academically highly rated. If I don’t approve of the government system, then it follows that I don’t approve of people assisting in the effort.
Your personal opinions do not make for fact, and it is long past time you get that little FACT through your head.
What you approve or disapprove is also of a subjective nature, and as all things of subjective nature what holds true for you does not necessarily hold true for others.
Please stop stating your personal opinions as facts when they are not. thank you.
The reason I post is to help change the language and the way people think about government schooling. Some I have invented myself. Others have been invented by others and I do my best to push them forward. Perhaps there have been some co-discoveries.
If you notice, in most cases, facts are not important but I and others are merely changing the way people look at things. For instance:
Parents **institutionalize** their children in government schools that resemble **minimum security prisons**. They ride buses that look like **prison work gang buses**.
Parents are not paying extra, or paying double, for their children to home or privately school. They are paying **ransom**.
Gabz, you are not a teacher. I rarely see you posting on other topics. Why do you spend so much time on education threads? Why are you so passionately interested in saving compulsory government school? ( Really, just wondering?)
My motivation for posting on school issues are the following:
* It breaks my heart to see so many children condemned by the government to failing government institutions. This is especially true when there are long, long waiting lists for highly successful programs like the KIPP schools.
* Government schools threaten the freedom of our nation. The Gramecian Marxists have made their long march through our nation's cultural institutions. Marxism is our nation's most serious threat and schools are their most important weapon. I **seriously** believe this.
Shove this in any lib’s face, however, and you’ll get outright denial that people act rationally in the face of incentives.
This is why they hate and fear the free market, it works on this principle, and they think it’s just magic, or that someone at the top (President Bush) is manipulating pricing and supplies.
No, no, no -
this is the “evolving standards of decency in a maturing society” that Justice Kennedy was referring to.
“Socialization” means to educate kids as socialists.
Is wintertime incorrect in the statement that
“education cannot be values-neutral”?
If education can be values (and worldview) neutral, please explain why you think this.
If it cannot be, what values are being taught? The ones that lead to 17 girls trying to get pregnant in high school?
It most likely seems this way to you because you only seem to be nterested in this one topic. However, if you look at my posting history you will find that you are, once again and as usual, completly and totally wrong. In fact education threads are very low on my list of topics of interest.
But, in response to your question, I post on this topic because as a parent of a school age child, who attends public school, I do have a vested interest, unlike you who just posts to insult others. Additionally I post to inform those unfamiliar with you that you are not typical of homeschoolers, who as a rule respect the decisions of others as they ask their decisions be respected.
As a general rule homeschoolers are wonderful people who do not insult or denigrate others on a daily basis, you are an exception to that rule and do far more damage to the homeschooling community than you think you are promoting.
Your vicious diatribes against those who teach in or whose children attend public school came up in a conversation yesterday I was having with a friend who homeschools. She is not a member here, but does lurk fairly frequently. She is utterly appalled by some of the things you say and hopes and prays that people do not think you represent the majority of homeschoolers. I have repeatedly assured her that most folks who read your crapola are far too intelligent to believe even for a minute that you are anything but an abberation when it comes to the majority of homeschoolers.
The reason I post is to help change the language and the way people think about government schooling.
In my personal opinion, you fail miserably on all counts. Please note, I preface my comment as a personal opinion, something you rarely do in your pronouncements. You wish others to take your word as FACT, when in FACT it is nothing more than your biased personal opinion.
Returning to where I started here, I would be more than happy to add you to some of the more than half-dozen ping lists I maintain, but I must warn you some of them, such as the Nanny-State list are VERY high volume. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm baically telling you that because of your own personal tunnelvision you have a very warped perception of the interests of others and thus should refrain from such pronouncements that are so abjectly false.
Have a pleasant day.
Foucault, who made that idea popular back in the 1970s, was hardly a conservative. In fact, he was a communist, a homosexual, and arguably of questionable sanity.
There are certain values, such as honesty, integrity, the value of hard work, kindness, etc., that are common to all major religions and cultures.
Do any of those values offend you?
If you google my state, Georgia, and 'character education requirements' you'll probably find the values that my state thinks should be taught or emphasized in schools. You can let me know which ones you have a problem with.
The ones that lead to 17 girls trying to get pregnant in high school?
Parents are the most important teachers of values, and if you read the article rather than just showing up here trying to bash public schools, you probably noticed that the author suspects that the students wanted to become pregnant because of values within their families and culture, not because of what they were taught at school.
But then again, I don't know why I'm telling you this...your tagline is 100% correct: "You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place"
Have a nice day!
Unlike leftists/liberals,
I’ll judge the process by its results,
not its intentions.
Whatever.
You are projecting unto me that which I have never stated.
You obviously think that, at least in some cases, public schools should be able to overcome the poor values taught by the families.
How do you propose that they do so?
In many cases, the schools are able to “overcome” the GOOD values taught by parents,
as evidenced by the number of students that “lose their faith” by the time they graduate (2/3),
vs the numbers of homeschoolers that keep their faith (95%).
I would say this was indicative of the schools overcoming family taught values.
Perhaps, since they can demonstrably and successfully teach contrary to the values taught in a family, they should be able to overcome the lack of values taught at home.
You know, of course, that the “research” upon which those “facts” is based is biased and of questionable methodology, but if it’s what you choose to believe...
Yes, and when the children of those parents come to public school they spread their contagion to the rest of their peer group.
Surely you know that a teen's peer group exerts at least as much influence on a teen as his parents, and certainly more than any values training put forth by a public school.
And therein lies the reason why I choose not to participate in that great leveler, the public school system. I am an education elitist; not a social elitist, not a financial elitist, not even an intellectual elitist, but a moral/ethical elitist. I simply will not send my children to a place where they are trapped with the spawn of adults whom I know are either not teaching their children moral values I find acceptable, or worse.
Perhaps when these incompetent parents find their ill mannered, immoral children back at home with them, knowing that the rest of society wants nothing to do with them, maybe then they will examine themselves. Or maybe not; but either way, I am not going to gamble with my childrens' childhood and future in order to make some crypto-socialists feel good about public education.
So, please know that I am aware that there are good teachers in public schools and there are many good kids, but the system itself is what I object to. I would object to it far less if I didn't have to subsidize it.
I suspect most of them are already in the welfare system, having been welcomed there by open arms as soon as their unwed mother status was confirmed. Most of them will not end up working I’m afraid, but being supported by the taxpayers instead.
That doesn’t necessarily mean he - or wintertime - was wrong. Look, I disagree with wintertime’s tactics and a lot of her phrasing but “minimum security prisons” are exactly how I see government schools. I had occasion to visit them a few times growing up, for Saturday chess meets and SATs. Every high school I visited reminded me more of a prison than anything else. Narrow windows, tight corridors - some even had grates that came down across the hallways at night - single points of entry... I know they probably don’t appear that way to those who are used to them but as an outsider they felt oppressive.
JenB, while I do not dispute your description of the public schools you visited, I do have to tell you that you are also describing the Catholic schools I attended for 12 years growing up.
In comparison to the Catholic elementary school I attended, the public elementary school my daughter attends looks more like a resort hotel. There are windows everwhere, including in the corridors, some of which contain walls of windows looking out onto grassy fields and playgrounds.
Even on overcast days there is an atmosphere of sunshine. It’s also very pleasant to see the motto “In God We Trust” prominently displayed in the corridors and all classrooms.
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