17 pregnancies at Mass high

It

"Should they feel shame?" A simple question. The nurse said "No.", that they should take personal responsibility for a bad decision, but not feel shame.

"No."??? What if they'd stolen lunch money from a grade school student? Should they feel shame then? What if they'd cheated on a math exam?

Why is bringing a child into a world where his mother is still a child...a child-mother likely to become a less-educated, poor adult who is much less able to provide the child with a decent future than her more-likely-to-succeed peers...why is this not seen as bad as cheating on an exam?

And where did these girls get their sperm donors? At least one chose a twenty-four year old homeless guy. Don't these girls learn about DNA and stuff in Biology class? Does she think she's going to raise the next Bill Gates with those genes?

I've read biographies of several famous people from back in the eighteen hundreds, and one thing that struck me was that it seemed they were taught morals as much as academics.

Character, integrity, self-dicipline, honor, humility, and helping their neighbors - were all drilled into them as students.

Why do we no longer believe our schools should teach morals? I'm not talking about religion. Our country was founded on the basis of freedom of religion - a concept that can't exist when you have a state religion. If there is a religion that does not believe in having good morals, I am not aware of it and it, arguably, should not have the status of 'religion'.

So why don't we teach morals in our schools?

Adults get along just fine when they have little concept of history, just ask anyone to place these names in chronological order - Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Julius Ceasar, Hagar the Horrible.

(OK, I got that last one from a comic strip.)

Adults get along just fine when they have little concept of mathematics, I'm living proof! And sentence structure? I was once accused of having a dangling participle and, not having a clue, quickly checked my zipper.

But adults do not get along so well without morals.

Somehow the concept was lost on both interviewer and interviewee. The interviewer pushed a "Just say no" philosophy - you know, the same one what won the war on drugs! The interviewee seemed to want to coddle and further enable wrong-doing.

Whether Left or Right, I think we all want our kids to lead healthy, happy, successful lives. Maybe it's time to put devisive rhetoric aside and take action. Just saying "No." will not work in a vacuum. It must be said within the wider realm of morals - morals that must be taught, even drilled in.

We must stop thinking that they'll somehow just be absorbed through osmosis. It doesn't work. I know - I once stuck a math book under my pillow the night before a test.

This shameful act occurred in Gloucester, Massachusetts, but the problem looms over every high school in every town.  I know we're often busy, working two jobs, trying to keep up with all the things expected of us.  But is any of that more important than our kids?  Parents, communities, schools - all of us should work hard to add a new cirriculum to students' workload - "morals".

Our high schools need "morals" - not day care centers!