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Originally Posted by AGDee
I'm also a little stunned by the assumption that any kid who gets pregnant must be too stupid to keep up with their studies. If they can keep up with the 4 weeks of homework while they stay home, then why shouldn't they be allowed to stay home? It seems like the majority of you just want to punish these young women rather than encourage them to strive for a positive future in spite of their obstacles.
ETA: What school district allows a kid to drop out of school for a semester? Perhaps allowing that would be the "maternity leave" that is needed. But, around here, if you miss 10 days of school in one semester, you are truant and you and your parents can be ticketed and/or arrested. You also lose the ability to get your drivers license. I think the law in Colorado would make it possible for a kid to drop out for a semester rather than trying to return to school 24 hours after having a baby.
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While I agree that young people who just make a misjudgment before they have sex does not preclude them from being wholly ignorant and stupid, many of them are in numerous areas--i.e. Britney Spears' sister as an example. If they lapse in good judgement that affects another life, what other areas would they lapse in, also? And failing school precedes these kinds of things as measured from a "public health" perspective. A young girl's esteem drops, she makes errors in judgment, leading to self-destructive behavior, then affecting another life. That is the course in the cycle of poverty...
Poverty robs civilized society of its maximum potential... Since it is morally wrong to hurt the poor, we are asked to help them the best we can--hopefully devoid of judgment. But, when harm is done, we are left to provide consequences for people's inappropriate behavior.
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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
In the districts where I've taught, kids can keep taking classes as many times as they want to until they get credit or until they turn 21, I'm pretty sure. There's absolutely no cost to the kid for classes taken during the regular school day and year or for going back for a fifth or sixth year of high school.
At my school if a young women got pregnant and didn't want to or couldn't return quickly, she could take whole year of maternity leave and just come back the next year in the fall. (Her parents might have to pretend they were home schooling to avoid truancy laws if she were younger than the legal drop out age, which I think is 16, but the school system wouldn't do anything punitive to her.)
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That's interesting. I have long forgotten what the truancy rules are. So, I brought up what my opinion of the alternative could be, and that is the best I can come up with.
I don't know what to do, I have never been pregnant or had a child. But, from my friends that do have children, and what the educators and pediatricians say, that spending those formative years with your child are very important.