RSS Feed MenuSince I started teaching in August of 2007, I’ve had no fewer than six girls become pregnant and bear the babies. I also know of a few who’ve had abortions. When I was asked by the students during election season what the differences are between Republicans and Democrats, I used a real example of teenage pregnancy to get my point across:
Last winter, when one of my young students became pregnant, a fellow teacher (and a die hard liberal) asked me one day if I’d be willing to help pay for her neonatal vitamins with him. This teacher had found out that she was eating very poorly and didn’t even have a clue about what kinds of vitamins she should be taking for her baby. The baby’s father was locked up for some reason or another. The girl’s father was nowhere to be found and her mother appeared to have less of a clue than her daughter of how to healthfully care for the baby.
It was a disappointing and sad story, but I said I wouldn’t purchase her neonatal vitamins. That is the responsibility of any number of people in her life, but not me. The vast majority of students agreed that it wasn’t my job to pay for the neonatal vitamins. I didn’t mind when the teacher called me a heartless Republican one bit because I had the kids on my side.
As a teacher, I told my students, it’s my job and no one else’s to teach this young girl to read and write so she can someday teach her children to do the same. Similarly, once that young girl and the father made the decision to make a child, it became their responsibility and no one else’s.
Often, teachers are played by students in inner city schools because they think they can win the respect of kids by giving them stuff – food, prizes, good grades, rides home, and neonatal vitamins. What a teacher really needs to do to win respect – true respect – is teach the kids as though their lives depend on it. I believe their lives do.
lucas // Jan 28, 2009 at 12:49 am
Is this a false dilemma? Isn’t it also okay to earn their respect and to help in their personal life? Wouldn’t it be good to teach kids like their lives depend on it and to help out in personal affairs? Good for you that you teach like it matters; but I don’t understand the point of this post.
Try to not let republican/conservative or democrat/liberal be such a big part of defining you (if it is). Encourage your colleague and students likewise. There is a whole wonderful life that isn’t based on false identities.
Alsadius // Jan 28, 2009 at 1:32 am
So you’re opposed to charity? Or is it just that it’s only good when it’s anonymous? I’m all for personal responsibility, but it’s not that fetus’ responsibility that it’s going to be born to a poor, ignorant mother. If the parents don’t step up, then somebody else ought to. You’re not personally under a moral obligation to do so, and I won’t condemn you for choosing not to, but raising it up as a moral principle that you *don’t* help the kid out?
You wouldn’t happen to be an Objectivist, would you?
stysonss // Jan 28, 2009 at 2:31 am
The question wasn’t “Is it your responsibility to [x]?” The question was, “Would you be willing to [x]?” And I thought the conservatives on Free Republic were so proud of how much more charity they gave than the “godless” liberals?
You didn’t illustrate anything, I don’t think, because the liberal never said it was your job; he asked if you were willing. If you had said the state would force you to purchase the vitamins for her, you might have had a case, I think.
Not that I disagree or in any way judge your decision. It’s no one’s business but yours, and whether you were in a financial position to donate, or any other thing, it was your call to make. I just hope you didn’t draw a line between, “Would you be willing?” and “I don’t have to!”
esurience // Jan 28, 2009 at 4:02 am
Wait… so you were trying to teach these kids the difference between Republicans and Democrats and as your lesson you imparted that Republicans like to punish the unborn out of some principle of personal responsibility? I’m… umm… I’m not so sure that’s the best message to be sending. You certainly don’t have an obligation to be helping out an unborn child, but the refusal to help isn’t something to be bragging about, either.
HHomer // Jan 28, 2009 at 7:08 am
What would Jesus do… ?
gblittle // Jan 28, 2009 at 7:49 am
You should have just given the phone number and/or address to both the student and your fellow liberal teacher to the local free health clinic. If your fellow teacher cared so much I’m sure they would even provide a free car ride instead of just asking for handout from you in an attempt to pass guilt.
turnturn // Jan 28, 2009 at 8:28 am
I love the commentary from the peanut gallery here! No doubt some of their biggest choices during the day are between the grande or vente latte. In their world infinite resources and empathy solve all problems. Your job certainly is not to be the parent or guardian. Your classroom leadership is what matters. Your ability to breakthrough to students in core learning disciplines matters. Your ability to empathsize or in this case fund students poor choices does not matter. Blurring the lines between work responsibility and social intervention distracts from the teachers primary purpose, to the detriment of all students.
sinz54 // Jan 28, 2009 at 9:31 am
I don’t understand this. The baby growing inside that girl may be damaged by the girl’s malnutrition. It’s simple charity (not a government mandate) to help the BABY (not the mom), so the baby can be healthy, regardless of the bad choices the baby’s mom made. If the baby is born retarded or with spina bifida due to the mom’s malnutrition, you may think you have taught the mom a lesson–but you did so at the expense of hurting another innocent life. Since social conservatives are also opposed to aborting the fetus that the mom can’t care for, putting the two stances together adds up to total indifference to the pregnant mom’s situation. And I don’t think that’s the right lesson to teach kids–or adults. Finally, refusing to pay a few dollars for a bottle of vitamins that might save the child from a lifetime of birth defects that are expensive to treat, sounds like you don’t believe that “A stitch in time saves nine” either.
lucas // Jan 28, 2009 at 11:29 am
Turnturn,
Why do you assume everyone else but you and the writer have trivial lives? I think you make a great argument if you just leave out the insults. Your argument will probably fall on deaf ears because of the ‘extra’ content. Someone isn’t trivial because the disagree with you. They may be wrong, but not necessarily trivial, right?
Jane2 // Jan 28, 2009 at 11:32 am
Whatever. What is your point, anyway? Perhaps you could have provided the name of an appropriate resource? Suggested the school nurse or a guidance counsellor? Or would that offend your idea of what teachers do as well?
abright // Jan 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Does Gibson really worship ideology over pragmatism? It seem he does. He diminished the potentially life destroying tragedy of unplanned pregnancy into a finger waggling lesson on individual responsibility. In the eyes of true believers, all pragmatic solutions suffer from the disadvantage of being reality based. Give up the nonsense of faith-based abstinence only pledges and provide young people with sex education, distribute condoms, and when all else fails, provide an avenue to safe antiseptic abortion. Then, when they have a chance to break the cycle of poverty and see that their education can lead to a better life, then they will be able to, yes, take responsibility for their own lives.
jsinger008 // Jan 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I think Mr. Gibbon’s post is both courageous and smart. His broader point, if I can be so bold to make this claim, is that the principle of subsidiarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity) is important to conservatives and other smart conservatives have suggested this principle can be important to charting a way forward for the GOP when it comes to hot button social issues:
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/11/11/conservative-coalition-building
Atomic Punk // Jan 29, 2009 at 9:28 pm
No. This is all wrong. If this happened at all, it was all wrong. Sure principle is important, but much more so when you are taking society as a whole. Compassion is more important when discussing individuals. This was a golden opportunity to show your compassion, and you failed. You DECIDED to become the stereotyped version of all of us just to make a broader point? I am not buying it. This is fiction.
BarbD // Jan 31, 2009 at 6:27 am
This story appalls me on a very deep level. Not that you didn’t choose to spend your own money on vitamins for this girl — rather, that you didn’t find some way for her to get help that didn’t violate your principles (perhaps from some of the resources others mentioned), and instead used her as a teaching tool with your students and here, in this blog. However poor her choices, and I’m sure given what you’ve shared about her life, they are legion, she doesn’t deserve this smug treatment.
Jefferson // Feb 1, 2009 at 8:54 am
This story illustrates the unexamined tension between the way gov’t bureaucracies operate & the way human beings live.
Gov’t controls thru categorization & separation. Its pigeonholes are programs: WIC; police; AFDC; public schools, housing, transportation; health clinics; etc. Human communities are interconnected: the young woman’s path as a student does not stay neatly separate from her role as a mother; her choice to have sex with the father of her baby is tangled up in her father’s absence from her life.
The school bureaucracy expects Thomas follow its priorities & procedures. To “teach this young girl to read and write” & that’s it. As a human being, he feels the tug to help out a young woman who’s in a bad situation. It’s easy for us to say “you should have helped!” But where does it end? Should he pay for the baby’s delivery? Diapers? Groceries? And what about the others? The drug dealer’s mule who only did it out of fear for his life who now needs to be bailed out of jail? the student who’s tiny family business that tottering in this distressed economy? And more, and more…
It is as if your city had a electrical black out, & you’re trying to keep up the whole power grid with your 5HP portable generator.
That said, if Thomas is going to do any good where he is, & not get burned out in the process, he’s going to need to learn how to throw a lifeline, without getting pulled under himself. In my locale, I would look to True Life Choice or BETA. These are people faithfully, desperately, tie together the strands of community frayed by our stupid infatuation with control-freak politics.
The dilemma exists because we’ve organized society on the basis of control. If it doesn’t fit into a bureaucrat’s policy manual, or a politician’s budget, we don’t see it. We act like a missing father is no more significant than a missing sock. We pretend that the intercourse that creates life is mere recreation. We delude ourselves into thinking that, even if a young woman’s life is spinning out of control, her schooling can continue serenely.
When we’ve restructured our institutions such that the family is central, freedom is the standard operating procedure & gov’t is constrained to support society instead of trying to run it, then we might make some real progress.
In the meantime, ordinary folk have 2 choices: flee from the inner city, or, hope you can tie things together faster than they’re unravelling.
Regards,
AT from ID // Feb 1, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Mr. Gibbon’s reasoning is totally appalling and not at all a Republican or conservative philosophy. I have Evangelical friends who open their homes to the criminals so they can be rehabilitated (personally totally repulsive for my taste) and help teenage pregnant girls to start non-productive and circular lives.
It is very shameful for a teacher to use an example such as this to advance his political and world views – though can be viewed and cheered as being bold and brave in a blog setting. As personal responsibility is something repetitively emphasized by this President, how can the Republicans claim sole ownership to the idea?
This kinds of attitudes unfortunately give negative reputation to the Republicans.
thomasgibbon // Feb 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I appreciate all your responses. My writing here wasn’t as clear as I would have liked, hence the justifiably angry responses. The young woman was aware of all the services she available to her. Our school has outreach for pregnant moms. We also have a nurse, so she wasn’t without help. If we as teachers are expected to be all these things – the mother, father, guidance counselor, social worker, etc – something is going to suffer. What suffers will be the actual teaching, which is, after all, what a teacher is paid to do. Like some of those who posted said, where does the generosity stop? There’s only so much one teacher can provide a student in terms of tangible goods. There are unfortunately many many cases similar to this young woman’s. I can’t possibly take them all in. When I first started teaching, I would make sandwiches for kids I knew were hungry. I gave rides home to kids who lived across the city. I felt like I was taking on all their issues. I almost went nuts. That’s why I really suggest that if you’re interested in seeing what inner city teaching is, go ahead and join a Teach For America or residency program. It’s really eye opening. In no way am I an expert, only a humble observer trying to show you some of the things you might not see on a daily basis. Thanks for all the comments and let’s keep the debate going. I want to know what conservatives are saying about things such as these and what we could do as a party to rally around important social issues in our inner cities.