I hope Hugh's just trying to stir up the mud a bit. I thought we political conservatives didn't believe in social engineering in the schools, thought that schools should focus on academics, and believed in personal responsibility. To think that we should hold a school principal responsible for the off-campus behavior of students, presumably not at school functions or on school time, seems to me to represent the height of the nanny state.
The parents of the students involved should hold the individual students responsible for their actions. After all, if the parents aren't concerned about their children's sexual behavior, why should school officials be? And if the parents are concerned, why should the school get involved at all?
This is a fantastic opportunity for the school principal's bosses to do absolutely nothing. Or maybe the principal could get the Radical Reality people to come out and do a free rally for the students
If it takes a village, let the village deal with it--keeping in mind there will soon be at least 65 more members of the village!
By no means is this the responsibility of the principal. Is he/she supposed to be out at the local Lovers' Lane every Friday night, keeping hormones in check? Responsibility for student sexual activity, unless it is occuring on campus during school hours, belongs to the students and their parents. Period.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if any teacher were to be responsible for the high pregnancy rate, it would be the elementary/junior high teachers who gave "The Talk" years before.
By the way, even a leftie like me would have said "no thanks" to the Radical Reality Rally for the same reasons you stated. Self esteem is great... try getting it through acheivement instead of empty pats on the back.
65 out of 490 sounds like a huge, systemic problem, and rounding up the usual suspects might not, at first, sound like a bad idea. but Stephen Jay Gould taught us that the only unexplainable trend or streak or statistical anomaly is Joe D's 56 game hitting streak. I'm sure there are schools with zero out of five hundred pregnant students out there, and their principal is similarly and conversely not doing anything in particular right to cause that, either.
ReplyDeleteNow, if in nine months we have 65 babies who all look like a certain math teacher, then we have a problem...
Steve, you're a very *evil* man!
ReplyDeleteI've decided to moderate my views a bit on this one. I hope we can all agree there's a "problem" in this particular town. The school is *not* part of the problem but it *can* be part of the solution.
Leave the principal alone.
Unless the principal or health teacher got them all pregnant (which does not appear to be beyond the realm of possibility these days), I'm a no on this one.
ReplyDelete