Ohio No-Sex Ed and a 13% pregnancy rate at local high school

[rfunk]

In the wake of an ongoing conversation about the quality (or lack thereof) of education in various nearby school districts (particularly the abysmal reputation of the Canton city school district) came the news that 65 out of 490 girls are pregnant at one of the Canton city school district's two high schools. (Sorry, now I can't find the story in the newspaper.)

"The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame," says the TV station re-reporting from the newspaper. No word on the mechanism involved in videogames et al getting girls pregnant.

All this caught the attention of Pandagon, who did some quick searching and discovered that Ohio Law basically requires that any sex education be of the abstinence-only-until-marriage type. Did you other Ohioans know this? I certainly didn't.

However, as far as I can tell that law is only about two years old, so I'm not sure how much of the blame it can take for Timken High's baby boom.

Update: Jeff found some more background on the Canton abstinence program.

Comments

[nontacitare.livejournal.com]

I think Chryslin's post on Pandagon hit the nail on the head. When less than 40% of Canton has a high school diploma (and less than 10% a college degree), and many of the local industries are going out of business, most teenagers have little to look forward to other than partying and/or starting a family of their own.

As the teenagers who choose to have sex will do so regardless, sex education - including information on birth control - is the only way to slow down teen pregnancy here in the short term.

The cruel irony of the situation is that pregnant girls tend to drop out of high school, which puts Canton City Schools in non-compliance with No Child Left Behind, and created the impression that the teachers aren't doing their jobs. And yet the only way CCS can mitigate teen pregnancy is to provide condoms in the schools, something forbidden by the current administration.

[chronarchy.livejournal.com]

Yes, the connection between video games and sex is pretty damn tenuous. I would like to point out that I'm pretty certain that video games kept me away from sex for many years. Come to think of it, TV and movies probably did to. I was watching cartoons and playing Zelda when I could have been having sex. . . if my fantasy world created by those activities hadn't diseased my social abilities to the point where interacting with girls was really damn hard.

Lax discipline and lazy parents I can see.

But damn, it's apparently time to write our representatives. Rat bastards.

[nicosomething.livejournal.com]

Nobody ever did anything wrong before video games, kids were perfect and never got into trouble. It was a utopian society for teenagers until Pong came along and messed it all up.

Damn you Atari!