I caught wind of a teenage girl toying with getting pregnant as a real concept. I mean, “Maybe I’ll get pregnant.” Like that would be interesting.
It reminded me of a project from decades ago where the adults in the high school (yes, there used to be some) required the girls to carry a raw, chicken egg for a month. Not just during one period, during a particular class, but 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month.
Your responsibility, girls, is to keep this egg warm, safe, secure and cared for all day, all night, every day for the next month. You bring it here safe and sound 30 days from now.
I do not see any good reason for not including the boys in this program.
Oh, you wanna play a game of basketball? …or practice with the team?
You better find someone you trust completely to take care of your egg while you go play.
It is like that having a baby. These kids need some reference point for thinking of these things.
Of course real babies involve meals (3 per day X 365 days a year X 18 years = 19,710 meals) , clothing (for every size kid from 0 to 18), diapers (lots and lots of diapers), puke on your shirts, baby poop on you, laundry (lots and lots of laundry), noise (lots and lots of noise), an 18-year (plus, plus, plus) commitment, housing, teaching …
and they often come with brothers and/or sisters!!!
Yeah, the egg project is a very small exposure to outward-directed responsibility.
Participating girls decorated their eggs, dressed them, named them … or not.
Many really got into the project and absorbed great lessons from it.
Some had their babies die. There are lessons in that, too.
This project could involve numerous aspects including the mathematics of setting up a household and raising a family. Does anybody talk to kids of reproductive age about these realities? If the institutions and people running them are not, they fail what is probably their most important opportunity.
Oh, but the parents are supposed to be doing THAT.
Really???
When???
Bus rides, school, after-school activities, sports meets, practices, homework, television, cell-phone-time, computer-time…
Oh no. The society today’s kids are operating in does its ever-loving best to make darn sure they do not get any guidance or knowledge of the ages from their parents. While that is not likely to change with the current trajectory, at least the schools could impart this little lesson of great value to its charges.