Yeah, well that "sooner or later" looms very large in this dicussion. There is an enormous difference between too soon - an 11 year old girl - and 'later' - a young woman who can make an informed and intelligent decision about whether to consent to sex.
I've met an awful lot of women who've paid dreadful prices for acts committed early in life. A lot of these women wonder what they could have been and have very low self esteem. Protecting that sixth grade girl at 11 will yield a stronger, more confident 21 year old woman... and maybe it'll teach a few boys that she's worth more than a quick roll in the back seat.
Every girl - and boy, too - should have counselling available. Just making pills available pushes them towards the wrong choice. Can't we do better?
I'm not talking about preaching, I'm talking about teaching... and protecting until the young ones can learn and then decide for themselves.
I'll say it again:
this is not the school's responsibility - certainly, it is not the school's
sole responsibility. Teachers are supposed to teach
academics - that is what schools were originally intended to do. Should teachers
demonstrate moral values? Of course they should. Should schools provide medical care for students who could not otherwise access it? It's a nice concept - but the school I'm at doesn't have a nurse, just a health aide, who had 3 hours (!?!) of training in how to pass out medication. Who is going to examine these girls? Who is going to perform their annual exams? Who is going to monitor if they are taking the pill daily as they should? Watch for side effects? Ensure they are taught to use barrier methods to reduce the risk of disease transmission?
Students spend an average of 13% of their waking time in school - when did the schools become responsible for what those students do with the remaining 87%?
Schools exist to
teach - not preach, not medicate. Parents are constantly approaching me, as special education teacher, to diagnose medical conditions in their children: ADD/ADHD, autism, dyslexia, etc. - but
I am not a doctor - I
cannot diagnose
medical conditions. That was pounded into me during my teachers' certification program: my job is to help students work within and around their academic/social/emotional difficulties, not diagnose them from a medical perspective. When, then, did schools become eligible to prescribe and dispense medications?
Health care centers on school grounds - for the convenience of parents and students who do not have health care - not a problem. But it should be clear from the instant such a program is conceived that it is
not part of the school - like the mental health services offered on the school grounds by our local county mental health program, this should be - if anything - a program offered on the school grounds by an
outside provider - NOT a school service, and most definitely
NOT a replacement for proper parenting.
Too many people are willing to abrogate their responsibilities as parents, as employees, as members of society in general - to the schools, to law enforcement, and so on. If you dislike a trend within society, by all means, stand up and protest it! But
please, quit placing the responsibility on the schools, the police, the firefighters - anyone but those who
should be responsible.
"It takes a village" is trite... it's been over-media-ized... it's become a catchphrase rather than the truism that it should be - nonetheless, it is the
community's responsibility as a
whole - not that of a part of the community that has already had every other social ill dumped on it, to the extent that its original purpose has been subsumed into parenting those whose parents cannot be bothered to do so themselves.
Sorry for the rant - but I just spent 7 1/2 hours at parent/teacher conferences over the last 2 days - as the teacher - so that I could talk to
6 parents... none of them parents of children who have behavioral problems in school (as a special education teacher, they all have academic difficulties); rather, they were all parents of children who work hard, help their children with their school work as best they can, and most of all - pay attention to their kids... not the parents of the kids who run wild outside the school and think that they can run wild within it as well.
