the blumenfeld education letter march_1995

8/7/2019 The Blumenfeld Education Letter March_1995

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The Blumenfeld

Education LetterVol. 10, N o.3 (Letter# 102)

"My People Are Destroyed For Lack Of Knowledge" HOSEA 4:6

M arch 1995ED ITOR : S amuell. BlumenfeldThe purpose of 1t1isnewsletter is to provide knowledge for parents and educators who want to save the children of America

from the destructive forces that endanger them. Our children in the public schools are at grave risk in 4 ways: academically,spiritually, morally, and physically - and only a well-informed public will be able to reduce these risks.

"Without vision, the people perish."

The New Barbarians :P ub lic S ch oo le rs With ou t C on sc ie nc e

At a recent trial of two youths accused ofstabbing to death a student in a classroom atDartmouth High School in Dartmouth,Massachusetts, in April 1993, a student wit-ness described how the killers shouted tri-umphantly and tried to make the "high five"hand slap after the attack. The BostonGlobeof 2/9/95 reported:

11ut was the testimony in Superior Court yes-terday of Aaron Cormier, who was 14 when his friendJason Robinson was fatally stabbed

nextto him de-

spite Cormier's attempt to deflect the hand that thrustthe knife. Cormier testified on the second day of thefirst-degree murder trial of Karter Reed, 18, one ofthree teenagers charged in Robinson's death.

Reed, Gator Collet, 16, and Nigel Thomas, 15,went to Dartmouth High School about 8:30 a.m, onApril 12, 1993, looking to avenge some slight alleg-edly committed by a student named Sean Pina, ac-cording to assistant Bristol District Attorney ThomasM. Quinn3d. They went to a social studies class anddemanded to see Pina. When he turned out not to bethere, Reed allegedly attacked Robinson.

The teacher, William Murphy, and assistantprincipal Albert Porter, who noticed th e presence ofthree non-students and ran into th e classroom, re-portedly wrested a baseball bat from Collet. Otherteachers pushed Reed to th e ground and allegedlytook away a .75-inch diameter steel rod.

At this point, a second student named John

Silvia, testified, Collet shouted, "Karter, you're scared.How does that feel?" Cannier, following Silvia on thewitness stand, testified that Reed replied, "fm scared,but I feel good."

As Collet was led out the classroom past Reed,who was helped back on his feet by men who hadseized him, the youths tried to slap t he ir r ai sedhandsbut were pulled apart by th e men holding them,Cormier testified. Cormier said he had seen Reedcome down an aisle and make a thrusting motiontoward Robinson's abdomen. [He] tried to pushReed's hand out of the way and later discovered hisknuckle had been cut. Cormier said he did not see aknife, thinking Reed had merely punched Robinson.But he said he later heard Robinson groan and exclaim,1/ Ah."

Silvia said he entered the room in time to hearRobinson groan and shout, "Oh, God, they got me."TIle youth ran into another classroom holding hisabdomen, Silvia said. When Robinson removed hishands, Silvia said, he saw a blood spot "the size of asi lver dollar."

Robinson ran out of the room, collapsing at th eend of th e hallway. He was taken by ambulance to Sf.Luke's Hospital and died.

That these two punks tried to give eachother the ''high five," as if the crime they hadjust rommitted was something to be elatedabout, makes one wonder about where theseyouths got their ideas from. That so many of

The Blumenfeld Education Letter is published monthly. Originalmaterial is copyrighted. by The Blwnenfeld Education Letter,Permission to quote is granted provided proper credi t is given. Readers are encouraged. to order and distribute additional copies ofthose newsletters they believe should be sent to legislators, columnists, talk shows, pastors, etc. Subscription Rate: 1 year $36.00.Address: Post Office Box 45161, Boise, Idaho 83711. Phone (208) 322-4440.


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these crimes are the result of minor disputesgives one the impression that these youngmonsters are the products of a nihilist educa-tion system, supported by a nihilist enter-tainment industry, in which conscience isnot developed lest it diminish the student'sself-esteem. It is not easy to realize thatmany of these oonscience1essyoung peoplein our society are, literally, monsters whomayor may not become human beings someday.

Here are some horror stories gleanedfrom the B osto n G lo beand Edu ca tio n We ek ,thefirst of which is about as diabolical and nihil-istic as it can get:

Down a dirt road in Senoia,Ga., in a trailer homeshadowed by poplar trees and Spanish moss, 15-year-old Jason Edward Lewis lived with his parents, untilhe killed them. The boy was alone in his room a weekago, police said, talking on the phone with a friendabout a plan to kill their parents and then take off ona road trip of death and mayhem in th e spirit of th eteenagers' favorite movie "Natural Born Killers."

"I'm going to do it," he told his friend, puttingth e phone down for a minute. While th e friendlistened, police say, Lewis grabbed his father's 12-gauge shotgun, which he kept in the closet for turkeyhunting. Police say they think th e first shot struck

Lewis' mother, who was sitting in a recliner watchingtelevision. Then, while his motber screarred, therewas another shot, which police believe struck hisfather, who was lying on the couch. Then a third,which struck his mother in the face, and a fourth to thehead of his father, police say.

Lewis' friend has told police that a fte r s ev er al ,chaotic and horrifying minutes punctuated withscreams and gun shots, Lewis returned to th e phoneand said in a flat monotone: "I did it It's done."

This case in Georgia is th e latest in what appearsto be a distmbing trend: children killing their parents.Three other youths were a rre ste d la st week along

with Lewis in connect ion with th e murders and arebeing investigated in "an elaborate plot by th e boys tokill all of their parents:' said Coweta County DistrictAttorney Peter Skandalakis.

The Georgia killings took place a week after tw ounrelated cases of teenagers killing their parents inAllentown, Pa, only a few days and a few miles apart.Lewis said he was angry because his father, a truckdriver, set a midnight curfew, Skandalakis said.

Police said Lewis exchanged notes with friends

referring to the main characters in "Natural BornKillers," a movie about a homicidal couple whomurder the woman's parents before setting off on akilling spree in which dozens of people die. (futonGlobe, 3/15/95)

Teena ge r WhoP a i d F riend to K ill P arentsC onvic ted of M urder

Wheaton, ill. - Eric Robles often blew up at hisparents if they told him to do better in school orrefused to buy him a car before he turned 18, prosecu-tors said. The anger eventually turned deadly.

Robles was oonvicted of first-degreemurder forpaying a friend $100 to fatally stab his parents, thenwatching as his mother Diana Robles was stabbed 28times and his father Peter Robles 22 times. A DuPageCounty jury deliberated 11 hours Friday before find-

ing the 18-year-old guilty but mentallyill

in theslayings in April 1993 at the family's home in Bartlett.Sean Helgesen, 18, Robles' classmate at Elgin

High School, faces a trial in February on murderch arg es. . .. Prosecutors said the teenagers plotted forat least a week They taped the bottom of their shoesto disguise footprints, put duct tape over the licenseplate of their car and wore nylon stockings over theirheads.

"The defendant is a spoiled, self-centered,manipulative murderer," Assistant State's AttorneyRick Kayne said during th e trial. (BG 12/25/94)

'A ' S tud en t Guiltyil calif. Murder

Santa Ana, CA - A straight A student was con-victed of murder for mastenninding the ambushkilling of another honors student suspected of tip-ping of f police about a plot to rob a oomputer-partsdealer. Robert Chan, 19, once a candidate for classvaledictorian, could get life in prison. The victim,Stuart Tay, 17, was lured to a garage on Dec. 31, 1992,with th e promise of a gun purchase. Chan was one offive teenagers charged in Tay's death. Two otherteenagers pleaded guilty in th e case. (PC 5/5/94)

1 1 Ye a r - O I d Dies in S chool Sh ooting

Butte, Mf - An 11-year-old boy died yesterday,a day after being shot in the head by an angry class-mate on a crowded elementaryschool playground. AIG-year-old boy fired a 22-caliber pistol three timesTuesday, upset over an argument the previous day at

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Education Letter, Pg. 3, March 1995

the Margaret Leary Elementary School, police said.Jeremy Bullock was standing next to th e intendedtarget about 10 feet from th e shooter as pupils waitedfor classes to begin. Jeremy, a fifth-grader, died at St.James Community Hospital. Deputy County Attor-ney Brad Newman said the boy, a fourth-grader, istoo young to be charged with murder, but could be

charged with being a delinquent youth. (BG 4/14/94)

Terrence Murray, 13, died after being shot once inmusic class at J . T. Moore Middle School. A studentwho was sitting behind th e slain student was takeninto custody. (BG 4/22/94)

G irl sent to Jail in G ang R ape C ase

Fort Worth, TX - A 14-year-old girl was sen-tenced. to 15 years in prison yesterday for luring afriend to a gang rape at her mother's apartment.Doctors said the 17-YE'M-old victim was so severelyinjured in the September attack that she may neverhave children. The girl was convicted on an aggra-vated sexual assault charge after she testified that sheknew her friend was having sex with four teen-agegang members, but thought it was consensual. Underterms of the sentence, the girl must spend the nextfour years in state juvenile facilities. When she turns18 a judge will decide whether to free her or send herto an adult prison to serve the rest of her sentence. (BG

1/12/95)

Nebra ska Tea ch er S hot by S tud en t

Chadron, NE - A sevcnth-grader walked into asocial studies class yesterday and shot the teacher as19 other students looked on. The bullet grazed teacherAndy Pope on the upper chest just as the morningclass was ending. He was hospitalized in good con-dition. It was not immediately clear what promptedthe shooting at Chadron Middle SchooL The seventh-grader is in one of Pope's classes, and there was nohistory of problems between the boy and Pope, saidMeryl Nelson, principal of the 325-student school.

(BG 2/9/95)

G irl, 9 , Wie ld s K nifeon S ch ool B us

Boston police yesterday arrested a 9-year-oldgirl on a Boston public school bus after she pulled afoot-long kitchen knife from her school bag and threat-ened to attack another child. Police said the third-

grader, who livesin

Dorchester and attends HarrietA Baldwin Elementary School in Brighton, tried tocoax a l(}.year-old rirl to fight her. But when the oldergirl refused, police said the youngster pulled the knifeout and said, "I'll cut your face up so nobody recog-nizes you."

Police received a radio call for help from the busdriver transporting about 20 children home at 4 p.mThe driver told police he turned to see the girl holdingthe knife, then pulled his vehicle over at the comer of

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Teenage r Charged inF ight Death

Southbridge, MA - A 15-year-old SouthbridgeHigh School student has been charged with killing aclassmate in a fistfight. The 15-year-old, whose namewas not released because of his age, was arraigned inDudley District Court Friday and charged. withmurder in the death of 17-year-old Edwin Maisonet.

Maisonet, a Southbridge High junior, was pro-nounced dead earlier Friday at University of Massa-chusetts Medical Center in Worcester from injuriessuffered in a fistfight Wednesday. Maisonet diedfrom a head injury. (BG 3/13/94)

Children Rob Teacher a tGunpoint

Memphis, 1N - Two children pulled a gun on ahigh school teacher in her classroom and stole nearly$4,000 collected for a class picnic, A 12-year-old whoallegedly fired at a pursuer after the robbery Mondaywas caught A second child got away with most of th ecash.

TI.e boys were at the end of a line of studentshanding money to "Whitehaven High School teacherHelen Jones. "The young man said, Tm here to pay:"said Bob Raby, coo rd in at orfor security for MemphisCity Schools. 'The teacher said, 'You don't even go toschool here: At which time one of them pulled a gunout and demanded th e m oney that she had just 0 0 1 -lected," The robbers took th e money bag and theteacher's purse, then ran.

Jones alerted. the principal, who chased. thethieves in a car while an assistant principal chased onfoot. The 12-year-old fired at the assistant principalbefore he was caught by police, Raby said. A.357Magnum was found in bushes nearby. (BG 5/11/94)

7th Grader Sla inin Nashville

Nashville, 'IN - A seventh-grader was shot andkilled in a darkened classroom yesterday while watch-ing a video of "Beauty and th e Beast" with classmates.


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Rutland and Washington streets in th e South End.The girl ran to the back of the bus and tried to hide th e

knife behind some seats, the driver said. (Be 2/8/95)

Five-Year-O ld Brings G un to School

Washington, OC - Police took a 5-year-oldMaryland boy into custody after he brought a loadedsemi-automatic handgun to his elementary schoolFriday and showed it off to his classmates. Police saidthat a teacher at th e school in Prince George's County,confiscated the 38-caliber weapon after she saw theboy showing it to a group of other students in the backof a classroom. She said the boy had taken th eweapon from a dresser drawer in his mother's house.The mother was charged. with two misdemeanorfirearms counts. (BG 2/5/95)

Gun S eized from8th G rader at S chool

Boston school officials yesterday seized a 22-caliber handgun with nine bullets in the clip from anSth-grade girl at the Mary Curley Middle School inJamaica Plain. Boston police said they later discov-ered the 15-year-old Dorchester girl also was carryingtwo plastic bags containing what was believed to be15 large chunks of crack cocaine and somewhite pow-der.

Fellow students saw the gun in the girl's schoolbag and reported it to administrators and AssistantHeadmaster John McU:>nough ronfiscated it It wasth e 12th gun seized in a Boston public school thisacademic year. (Be; 6/3/94)

15-Ye arO Id Rape s 6 -Yea rO ld

Walpole, MA - A 15-year-old Walpole youth hasbeen placed in custody of th e state Department ofYouth Services for raping and molesting a 6-year-oldgirl .... Aftera daylong hearing 1 a s t Friday, he wasfound delinquent on charges of statutory rape, as -sault with intent to rape and indecent assault andbattery.

Norfolk DistrictA tto rn ey WilliamD. De1ahuntsaid there have been 14 cases of juvenile sex offendersreported in Walpole since 1988. (BG 2/18/94)

Student w ith G unand Drug s Arre ste d

Boston.MA .. A 15-year-old student at Dorch-

ester High School was arrested at the school yester-day when police said they found him carrying aloaded gun and four bags of what is believed to becrack cocaine. At 11:40 a.m. a teacher notified schoolpolice that two students were passing bullets backand forth between them. Police said the suspect triedto run but was subdued after a struggle. Police tookfrom him a .3 8 caliber handgun with three bullets inth e cylinder. (BG 3/23/94)

D .C . S tud en t Murd ere din School

A 14-year-old Washington, D.C, boy has beencharged as a juvenile with first-degree murder in thefatal shooting of a 16-year-old at the city's CardozoH ig h S ch oo l.The victim, Antar A . Hall, a sophomoreat Cardozo, was shot three t imes in the back on Jan. 5,following what witnesses described as an argument

between th e youngster and his alleged attacker. Theshooting quickly raised new concerns about safety atthe city's schools. 'We can put all the security officersand rretal detectors we want," said SuperintendentFranklin L Smith, ''but we can't stop someone frompulling open a door and shooting inside." (EW 1/18/95)

F ourth -G ra ders w ith C oca ine Arrested

Six 4th-grade students who were caught carry-ing small bags of cocaine in their affluent Tampa, Fla.,

elementary school were suspended this month andplaced in an alternative school for first-time offend-ers. The students, who range in ag e from 9 to 11, werearrested and ch arg ed w ithpossession of a total of 35gram; of cocaine. The student who brought th e drugto school, am passed it around to classmates, wascharged with distribution of th e drug. If th e studentscom plete the9O-day program, the arrests will no tappear on their permanent records. Police believe anadult gave the cocaine to the child, who then took it to

school. (EW 1/19/94)

S tuden t K illsS e l f

in Class

A 17-year-old high school student shot andkilled himself inside his first-period classroom at arural east Texas high s ch oo l la telast month. JosephLeon Olivo, a student at Kennard High School, inKennard, 130 miles north of Houston, brandished arifle shortly after 8 am. on Jan. 21 and told the teacherand his classmates th e he wanted them to leave be-

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cause he was going to k il l h imsel f, [imbo Rains, th eHouston County sheriff said.

School officials evacuated that wing of the schooland returned to try to talk th e student out of shootinghimself. Mr. Olivo pointed the rifle at them and toldthem to leave; shortly afterward, he turned the gun onhimself the sheriff said. Mr. Olivo left a note in the

classroom indicating that he had personal problemsand that "he didn't want to live anymore." Mr. Olivo,who apparently slipped the gun into school by hidingit in a pants leg under a heavy coat, had borrowed therifle from a friend during hunting season. (EW 2/2/94)

S tud en t K illed in L os An ge les

Police were investigating last week the fatalshooting of a Los Angeles student during a gang-related argument. Rolando Ruiz, 16, a student atHollywood High School, was walking in front of th eschool Sept. 7 when three young men approachedhim and a fight began. Mr. Ruiz was shot in the chestand collapsed to the ground as his assailants fleetPrincipal Jeanne Han rushed to Mr. Ruiz to performcardiopulmonary resuscitation, but when she reachedhim he was already dead. The incident happened justhours before Superintendent of Schools Sid Thompsonwas to unveil a crime-prevention program that in-creases community-watch efforts and police patrolsaround L.A. schools. (EW 9/21/94)

S tud en t C ha rg ed w ith Murd er C an A tte nd S ch oo l

A 17-year-old Massachusetts student charged.with murder in an off-campus incident must be a l-lowed to attend high s chool b ec au se school officialsdid not follow proper procedures in suspending him,a state appeals court judge has ruled. The decision toallow Stephen DiRenzo to return to Rockland HighSchool angered district and state officials. Mr. Di-Renzo is one of six teenagers accused of beating todeath a 22-year-old man outside a Rockland sand-wich shop in February. He is free on $25,(XX)bail. (EW

9/21/94)

S tuden t Murders S tuden tin Iowa

A state police trooper's stepson faces first-de-gree murder charges in a shooting last month at anOttumwa, Iowa, high school. 'The victim, a IS-year-old boy, died of two .22-caliber gunshot wounds to

th e head, police said. The 16-year-old boy arrested inthe murder was convicted of armed robbery last yearand had been released from juvenile detention fiveweeks before the shooting. (EW 8/3/94)

Boy S trangledat ResidentialSchool

A 13-year-old boy faces murder charges in thestrangulation of a 12-year-old boy at a residentialtreatment center and school for troubled youths inPleasantville, N.Y. The victim's body was found onthe grounds of th e Pleasantville Cottage School. Policebelieve the older boy strangled the victim with hishands. No motive is known. The school is a nonprofithome for about 200 children, ages 8 through 18, whoare referred for counseling and treatment by variousstate child-welfare agencies. (EW 8/3/94)

Honors S tud en t K ills P are ntsA 17-year-old honors student in Union, KY, who

had just killed his parents and two sisters showed upfor his trigonometry class with the gun used in th ekillings, then surrendered after talking to an assistantprincipal. Local officials had not decided last weekwhether to charge the boy as an adult or juvenile.Friends said that th e student at Rylc High School hadbeen having problems after being shunned by a girl-friend.

About a week before the killings late last month,he was given community service for bringing a stun

gun to school. His parents had punished him bytaking away the keys to his pickup truck and notallowing him to listen to his favorite music, officialssaid. (EW 6/8/94)

BoyMurdersGirlin Schoo l Restroom

Authorities have charged a lS-year-old boy withthe beating death of a female classmate at a suburbanSt. Louis high schooL The suspect, from Florissant,MO, was being held last week in a juvenile-detentioncenter for th e Jan. 24 slaying of Christine Smetzer, 15,at Mc.Ouer North High School, The girl's badlybeaten body was discovered in a restroom by anotherstudent shortly after 3 pm. The boy attended adistrict-run behavior-d.isorder program that is runout of the school, officials at the Fergoson-Florissantdistrict said. (EW 2/8/95)

As the reader can see from the above

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Education Letter; Pg. 6 r March 1995

items, no part of the country is immune fromthese horrible occurrences. They take placein the inner city, the suburbs, and in ruralcorrununities. The curriculum is virtuallythe same throughout the nation's schools,and the cultural influences through musicand television are all pervasive. The onlytrue safety for children is to be found in wel1-run private schools and home schools.

Teenage D rug Use Up

Marijuana use among the nation's eighthgraders, some as young as 13, has more thandoubled since 1991 ,while at the same timethe number of eighth graders who reportedusing cocaine also jumped, according to anational survey released 12/12/94. Theannual study also found that cocaine useamong high school sophomores increasedfrom last year, and that the percentage ofboth sophomores and seniors who had triedmarijuana rose for the second year in a row.

The nationwide survey of about 50,000eighth graders, sophomores and seniors

showed that teenagers overall appearto

beincreasingly less concerned about the healthrisks of using illicit drugs. Among highschool seniors surveyed, 30.7 percent saidthey had tried marijuana at least once in thepast year, compared with 26 percent in 1993and 21.9 percent in 1992. Almost 46 percentof seniors in 1994 reported using an illegaldrug such as cocaine, lSD or heroin at leastonce in their lives, compared with 43 percentin 1993.

'The annual survey, which began in 1975,was conducted by the University of Michi-gan "With a grant from the National Instituteon Drug Abuse, an agency of the US Dept. ofHealth and Human Services. A new surveyby the Massachusetts Dept. of Educationsaid that nearly 30 percent of students sur-veyed, or about 72.000 teenagers, said they

had been offered, sold or given drugs onschool property during the 1992-93 schoolyear. (Boston Globe, 12/13/94)

College D rug Arres ts Up

The number of drug arrests increasedsharply on the nation's college campuses in1993 while murder, rape and burglary ratesdeclined, according to an annual survey.Campus officials reported a total of 4,837drug-related arrests, 34.3 percent more thanthe 3j)01 reported for 1992. The numberswere contained in a survey of 796 schools

released today by the Chronicle of HigherEducation. Aggravated assaults rose by 2.7percent, but the number of rapes declined by19.9 percent and burglary dropped 4.5 per-cent. Fifteenmurders were committed, downfrom the 17 reported in 1992.

A 3-year-old federal law requires col-leges to compile aime statistics and providethem to students and staff. Differences in theway crimes are reported and categorizedmay skew campus crime data, school offi-

cials say. Rapes, for example, are not alwaysincluded in the statistics from campus policeif the assaults were reported only to residen-tial advisers or campus rape crisis centers.(Boston Globe, 1/'29/95)

Hero in and Marijuana Use UpAm ong Young Am ericans

Use of Heroin and marijuana is on therise, while cocaine use is steady in someareas of the nation, according to spot checksprepared for the White House drug policeoffice. Lee Brown, director of the Office ofNational Drug Control Policy, said the long-term decline in drug use among young peoplestopped several years ago. The new infor-

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mation comes not from the usual surveys butfrom a combination of ethnographers whotalk to drug users and dealers, plus research-ers and others in the area, drug treatmentspecialists and police.

According to the report, heroin inhala-tion has become the "ill thing" in th e NewYork nightclub drug scene and dealers arespecifically targeting that market. Speed-balling-injecting a combination of heroinand mcaine--appears to be th e norm in drugcultures. Cocaine remains the primary drugof abuse, the report said.

Marijuana use is up ill most areas. Nowpopular are "blunts;' fat, marijuana cigars,surfacing in Los Angeles and among South-

ern students after being spotted in New Yorkand Washington. Hallucinogens such asLSD, mescaline and PCP, are reemerging,while Denver, Los Angeles and San Fran-cisco mentioned a rise in amphetamine use.(B o sto n G lo be , 5/12/94)

P rozac and R ita lin U se R isesAmong C hild ren

Prozac, the best-selling antidepressanttaken by millions of American adults, isincreasingly being prescribed for childrenand adolescents--even to children as youngas 5 or 6.

'just as it was OK 20 years ago to takeyour kid to an analyst, now it's OK to putthem on Prozac," says Dr. Massan Hassibi,director of child and adolescent psychiatryat Metropolitan Hospital in New York City.

Prescriptions of Prozac and similar newantidepressants to children have more thandoubled since 1990, according to govern-ment statistics. Over the same period, theuse of Ritalin has also doubled, making it themost widely prescribed psychoactive medi-cation in children.

'There's a lot of looseness in the way

these medications are being prescribed," saidDr. Alexandra RoIde, a child and adolescentpsychiatrist in Watertown, Mass. Many ofthe teenagers she sees in the clinics say anti-depressants do not help. "They really needsomeone to talk to, and there just isn't any-one. Taking a pill gives everyone a falsesense of security-that everything is all right,when in fact a child's development canoccasionally be impaired in some way."

Pressure to medicate, mental healthprofessionals say, can come both from man-aged-care insurance companies trying to savemoney and families reluctant to delve intotheir own emotional lives.

"Parents want something to happen

quickly, and they don't always want to tookat what's really going on," said Dr. ElizabethBeane, a child and adolescent psychiatrist inBraintree, Mass.

Most psychiatrists agree that medica-tions should never be used alone, withoutother forms of therapy, in treating childrenand adolescents. They note that while con-trolled studies have shown that antidepres-sants work in adults, research has not shownthat these medications are effective in chil-

dren. (B o s to n G l ob e , 10 /2 6/9 4)

H igh Schoo l Yearbook Rejec tsA bstin ence A d

Student editors of Lexington HighSchool's 1994 yearbook have given a thumbsdown to a proposed ad promoting sexualabstinence. (This is Lexington, Mass., ofAmerican Revolutionary Minute Man fame.)The ad had been submitted by the LexingtonParents Information Network, a groupformed last year partly in response to a deci-sion by the School Committee to make con-doms and sexual information available tostudents at the high school.

The ad "doesn't fit with the nature of the

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Education Letter, Pg. 8 ,March 1995

book, which is supposed to be a kind ofmemory and history book for the students,"said Dow au, the yearbook's co-editor, 'Theyearbook's purpooe, and philosophy behindit, is a personal keepsake." The staff of about

six students decided unanimously to rejectthe ad.Douglas Yeo, chairman of the parent

group, and a member of the Boston Sym-phony Orchestra, said he was disappointedin the decision. He said he had been tryingsince November to place a full-page ad thatstated, 'We Know You Can Do It!" above thesingle word "ABSTINENCE:' with a bottomline that added, 'The Healthy Choice." A$200 check to pay for the ad was recently

returned to the group."The students have legal grounds to

support their contention that it is their rightto decide what is printed in their publica-tion," said Jeff Young, Lexington SchoolSuperintendent "Neither Douglas Yeo norany other individual has a superseding rightto force students to print a particular mes-sage simply because he wants it printed."

Yeo said he thought school officials andstudents were trying to censor ads promot-ing sexual abstinence. He said his group'srole was to "strengthen public education inour community by informing parents andenabling them to become more involved intheir children's education." (B ee to n G lo be , 4/9/94)

Mass . H as H ighest R ate o f

U nw ed Teenage B irth s

Nearly nine of every 10 teenagers whogave birth in Massachusetts in 1991 wereunmarried, the highest percentageof out-of-wedlock teenage births of any state in thenation. According to the most recent dataavailable from the National Center for Health

Statistics, &; percent of the 7,D18 mothersunder age 20 who gave birth in this state twoyears ago were not married. The percentagewas higher in Boston, hitting 92 percent. InSpringfield, 90 percent of teenage mothers

were unmarried.The new statistic has experts puzzledtrying to fathom why the percentage is sohigh in Massachusetts and prompted activ-ists of all stripes to urge remedies rangingfrom improved sex education to welfarereform to a return to "traditional morality."Of the 6,788 children born out of wedlock toteenage mothers in 1991, 5,454 were born towhite mothers and 1,334 to black mothers.Hispanic teenagers accounted for 1,773 of

the births.Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, vice presi-

dent of the Institute for American Values,noted that the high number of white unwedteenage mothers in Massachusetts is recordedamid escalating fears of a growing "whiteunderdass" that has seen the number ofumnanied women giving birth soar by 50percent over a six-year period. Only theDistrict of Columbia ranked higher thanMassachusetts in the percentage of unwedteenage mothers, at 95 percent. Texas rankedlowest, with 39 percent.

Whitehead said the increase may be duepartly to the fact that the age of first sexualenrounters ha s steadily dropped while thestigma against unwed motherhood has lostits power.

Sandi Martinez of Concerned Womenfor America, a group espousing traditionalvalues, said the statistic underscores the needfor an "abstinence curriculum" to teach stu-dents how to refrain from sex. Ellen Convis-ser, president of the state chapter of theNational Organization for Women, contendsthat the state should remove restrictions onaccess to abortions for teenagers. (BostonGlobe , 2/11/9 4)

L.. .- The Blumenfeld Education Letter - Post Office Box 45161- Boise, Idaho 8371 ---'

the blumenfeld education letter march_1995

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