13 ms·

What your first-grade life says about the rest of it

96 points by mr_tyzic 12y ago

ilamont 12y ago
For anyone who is interested in further reading on the impact of drugs on Baltimore neighborhoods and the people who live there, I urge you to check out The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1). One of the readers on Goodreads summed it up quite well: Books don't get much more powerful or moving than this. The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to stay straight and the parents who worry about them, when they're not too busy trying to score their next fix. The stories are harrowing--from people who spend their days cashing in scrap metal for cash to get hooked up, to families sharing one small bedroom in a shooting gallery. Pretty much everybody is hoping for a change in fortunes, but the book offers few happy endings. In spite of this, its a fascinating glimpse of a world where most of Simon's readers will never go. The narrative is occasionally broken up by Simon and Burns' musings about the war on drugs. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, its hard to disagree with Simon's belief that the war has failed, at least in his little corner of the world. There's a particularly powerful passage near the end where Simon flat out shatters the Horatio Alger myths that many middle-class suburbanites cling to, particularly the idea that should they find themselves in that situation, they'd simply apply a little Puritan gumption and work their way out their unfortunate circumstances. In the end, he doesn't offer any solutions and precious little hope. Yet, the people who live there are more than mindless junkies. They're human, with hopes and dreams and stories to tell. Perhaps Simon's greatest achievement is the way in which he employs his sharp eye and powers of observation to paint a wholly three-dimensional and, given the circumstances, refreshingly non-judgmental picture of a community in deep decline. In the end, its an amazing powerful read, one that will leave readers deeply affected and likely having shed at least a couple of tears along the way. (2) After reading the Washington Post article, I wondered about DeAndre McCullough, one of the teens described in The Corner who seemed like he had a chance to get out despite some terrible family problems -- what had happened to him? Sadly, DeAndre died at age 35. David Simon wrote a touching obituary here (3) 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/reviews/971123.23moslet.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/reviews/971123.23mosle... 2. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17690092?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17690092?book_show_act... 3. http://davidsimon.com/deandre-mccullough-1977-2012/ http://davidsimon.com/deandre-mccullough-1977-2012/
- Bulkington 12y ago
  RE: Baltimore Who knew there's a vibrant ubran culture devoted to riding wheelies on motorcycles down major avenues, with crowds gathered on the sidewalk and all waiting for the police chase to begin? I recommend the movie reviewed below. Still not sure what it says about poverty and race in the US. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/movies/12-oclock-boys-documents-dirt-bike-riders-in-baltimore.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/movies/12-oclock-boys-docu...
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Mostly it says poor people are bored stiff and will do stuff for fun just like anybody else.
fuzzywalrus 12y ago
Pretty small sample size (most due to it being limited to Baltimore) but a nice read. None of the results are surprising, children from poor families remain disadvantaged throughout school and thus the cycle of poverty continues... :/ The most revelatory statement was the inherited job networks that that the disadvantaged white males had over the other children.
MoonHarvest 12y ago
This is by far the best article I've read about this study. Thank you for sharing. What most interested me was this quote about white children. "These children did not inherit college expectations. But they inherited job networks." I can verify this phenomenon using anecdotal evidence, where poor white children are expected to learn their parents' (generally their father's) crafts but not expected to learn anything beyond that. While my own college-educated parents passed down their respect and appreciation for learning to me, I saw some of my childhood friends' parents pass down their mistrust and apathy towards learning to my friends. I was not surprised when I came back from college one spring break and learned that one of my old friends (white, poor, no college, terrible home life) was currently on the lam for killing a teenager over a drug deal. I was shocked by the fact that I wasn't at all surprised. What bothers me more is how I can't relate to how hard life must be for this old friend, and especially how hard it is for primarily black children who inherit little but discrimination, through anything but anecdotes. I think this is more "friend guilt" than "white guilt." No one wants to see people they care for, or once cared for, victimized by systems beyond their control. Therefore, based again on my own anecdotal evidence, I'm glad this study continues to receive attention.
- danso 12y ago
  > What most interested me was this quote about white children. "These children did not inherit college expectations. But they inherited job networks." I can verify this phenomenon using anecdotal evidence, where poor white children are expected to learn their parents' (generally their father's) crafts but not expected to learn anything beyond that. What a coincidence that I was just re-watching the second season of "The Wire", which focuses on the white side of Baltimore, albeit the low-privileged stevedores. From a scene: http://www.siliconvalleyfrogs.com/thewire/ep20.html http://www.siliconvalleyfrogs.com/thewire/ep20.html SOBOTKA: Your son... The oldest one, he goes to what school? DIBIAGO: Jason's at Princeton. SOBOTKA: Princeton. And after he graduates he's gonna do, what? DIBIAGO: Whatever he wants. SOBOTKA: Right, you sent him to Princeton to do whatever the fuck he wants. You know, back when we was kids, Danny Hay's father stole a case of cognac off a ship. 'Cept when he gets it home, it ain't cognac, it's Tang. DIBIAGO: Tang? SOBOTKA: Just invented. TV was saying it's what the astronauts drank on their way to the moon. You drink it, well... DIBIAGO: You could be an astronaut too. SOBOTKA: All summer long, that shit was all the hare kids drank, Tang with breakfast, Tang with lunch, Tang when they woke up scared in the middle of the night. What do you think they grew up to be? Stevedores. What the fuck you think? Something tells me Jason Dibiago will grow up and squeeze a buck the way his old man did.
wudf 12y ago
Check out the Up Series if you find this interesting. Video interviews with English kids from age 7 to 56. "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
I'm confused. Who's to say the 1st-grade experience was critical? Did it change by high school? Maybe its the high-school years that are critical, and in these children circumstances were unchanged. Just sayin, without varying something there's no pinning a date on it. "Fix this by 1st grade or its too late" is what it sounds like.
gshubert17 12y ago
Mortality [0] among Americans from ages 6 to 28 was about 1.1% in 2010. Take the sum of male and female living at age 28, divided by the sum of those living at age 6. That's about 99%. The change in the number of survivors is the mortality rate. That would be about 9 individuals in the sample size of 790. During the period of the study mortality would have been a little higher, since life expectancy has increased about 6 years since the early 1980s. But the study counted 26 deaths (that they knew about). Being poor's a killer. [0] http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
canadev 12y ago
I really enjoyed this article (in a sad sort of way). I read an article in the NYT that was sort of similar about a month ago (just looked it up: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-is-a-hard-life-inherited.html?ref=opinion http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kr...). Now, I really don't know a whole lot about these subjects, but it strikes me that a basic income system would serve society as whole very well here. In fact, I've always had a theory that the best way to do things would be what I call a "relaxed meritocracy." Basically: everyone has access to housing, food, medical care, and education at a decent standard -- the bare minimums for life, plus a little bit on top so that it's not horrible. (Like living at a dorm room in university.) Then, capitalism on top. Incentive to do well, and the freedom to experiment with stuff that may just crash-and-burn. And nobody is ever well-and-truly left behind. Can someone please poke holes in why this would be a bad idea?
- Vjdjcjdjfhc 12y ago
  As long as the patricians view those below them as subhuman failures, they will never allow it. They think that if someone is not just like them, it must be because of some grievous personal fault.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Or, you know maybe we could have a working example first, in a tiny country like Sweden.
    - afafsd 12y ago
      Or how about remote Aboriginal communities in Australia? If you want to see what giving people just enough money to live on looks like, check out our remote Aboriginal communities where the government hands out enough money to live (mediocrely) on to everybody, so what's their incentive to get a job? What's their incentive to do anything? The results? Well the worst one is massive substance abuse problems. If they can't get booze, they sniff petrol. Actually for the most part they sniff petrol and drink booze. Highly educated creative-class people are the minority who can deal with free money without getting sapped of initiative, because (a) we tend to get satisfaction from work and (b) we can earn substantially more by working than by not working. But for someone at the bottom end of society who couldn't earn more than minimum wage anyway, granting them minimum wage for doing nothing is probably the worst possible thing you can do to them. Even if some choose a life of honest toil for slightly more money, vast numbers will choose a life of idleness and substance abuse.
jbuzbee 12y ago
From my own experience, expectations have a whole lot to do with where your life goes. In my house, there was never any question that my siblings and I would go to college as certainly as we went from 1st to 2nd grade. There was never any discussion otherwise. And now that I have kids, the same is true. College is the next step after High School as certainly as High School is the next step after Middle School. Looking back to my High School days, I see friends that didn't grow up with these family expectations and see that their life-path has been more difficult than mine. I recall difficult times in my own college days when I pondered dropping out to take a blue-collar job, but I knew what my family expectations were. I continued on when others with different expectations would have quit and ended up with the menial job I considered taking myself. I'm not sure how the schools can raise expectations of these kids when they have some many negative role-models around. It's a tough problem.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
  I'll completely disagree college should be necessary. It is this kind of thinking that leads people who have plenty of job skills but no college education to feel like a failure in life. From what I've seen personally, there are a real lot of factors that keep the poor poor. Probably too many to count. College education in and of itself isn't remotely enough. There's also "life skills" (for lack of a better word) that are not emphasized. I grew up poor and I now work in an office with people who grew up middle class. I sometimes find it difficult to relate to them.
afafsd 12y ago
This kind of shit is why I'm pro-abortion but anti-choice. It's clear that the lower classes are doing a terrible job of raising their own children, despite the best efforts of the rest of society to educate them, they can't escape the terrible values and role models imparted to them by their parents. And yet... >Before they turned 18, 40 percent of the black girls from low-income homes had given birth to their own babies
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- prawn 12y ago
  Perhaps if people didn't try to prevent sex education or access to free birth control? Instead some are pushing abstinence like it will reliably happen.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Teenage pregnancy in the first world has little to do with either sex education or values. Having kids is the default mode of people. The instinct to reproduce is suppressed in the wealthier class, because they have a huge opportunity cost to do so. Poor people don't have much of an opportunity cost, and indeed have economic incentives to have kids (more welfare support). 60% of girls in the study didn't have kids as teenagers, yet only 4% of the whole sample went to college. It wasn't like the people gave up a lot by having kids.
    - jnazario 12y ago
      > Teenage pregnancy in the first world has little to do with either sex education or values. i don't know where you get your ideas but they do not jive with many more learned observations than yours. http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2012/03000/Comprehensive_Sex_Education_for_Teens_Is_More.5.as%20%20px http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2012/03000/Compre... Comprehensive Sex Education for Teens Is More Effective than Abstinence http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeature&featureID=1041 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeatu... National Data Shows Comprehensive Sex Education Better at Reducing Teen Pregnancy than Abstinence-Only Programs http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/250073 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/250073 The Effects of Sex Education on Teen Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080319151225.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080319151225.ht... Comprehensive Sex Education Might Reduce Teen Pregnancies, Study Suggests http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S Kathrin F. Stanger-Hall, David W. Hall PLoS One. 2011; 6(10): e24658. Published online 2011 October 14. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024658 related: http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-education-does-not-lead-to-abstinent-behavior/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-educati... Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/11/30/uga-study-higher-pregnancy-rates-in-states-with-abstinence-only-ed-programs-in-schools/ http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/11/30/uga-study-... UGA study: Higher pregnancy and birth rates in states with abstinence-only sex ed programs in schools
mrborgen 12y ago
I suspect todays kids will be even more victims of their upbringings, and that this trend simply is instoppable. Scary. Even here in Norway, where equality is the highest deed, the classes are increasingly moving away from each other..
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lazyant 12y ago
"These people are just lazy, they have color TVs in their houses. In America anyone can make it if you work hard". Literally what a friend-of-a-friend told me about why she was voting Republican, seems to be a recurring cliche but as an European my jaw dropped. (She was a white girl with rich parents btw).

96 points by mr_tyzic 12y ago

For anyone who is interested in further reading on the impact of drugs on Baltimore neighborhoods and the people who live there, I urge you to check out The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1). One of the readers on Goodreads summed it up quite well: Books don't get much more powerful or moving than this. The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to stay straight and the parents who worry about them, when they're not too busy trying to score their next fix. The stories are harrowing--from people who spend their days cashing in scrap metal for cash to get hooked up, to families sharing one small bedroom in a shooting gallery. Pretty much everybody is hoping for a change in fortunes, but the book offers few happy endings. In spite of this, its a fascinating glimpse of a world where most of Simon's readers will never go. The narrative is occasionally broken up by Simon and Burns' musings about the war on drugs. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, its hard to disagree with Simon's belief that the war has failed, at least in his little corner of the world. There's a particularly powerful passage near the end where Simon flat out shatters the Horatio Alger myths that many middle-class suburbanites cling to, particularly the idea that should they find themselves in that situation, they'd simply apply a little Puritan gumption and work their way out their unfortunate circumstances. In the end, he doesn't offer any solutions and precious little hope. Yet, the people who live there are more than mindless junkies. They're human, with hopes and dreams and stories to tell. Perhaps Simon's greatest achievement is the way in which he employs his sharp eye and powers of observation to paint a wholly three-dimensional and, given the circumstances, refreshingly non-judgmental picture of a community in deep decline. In the end, its an amazing powerful read, one that will leave readers deeply affected and likely having shed at least a couple of tears along the way. (2) After reading the Washington Post article, I wondered about DeAndre McCullough, one of the teens described in The Corner who seemed like he had a chance to get out despite some terrible family problems -- what had happened to him? Sadly, DeAndre died at age 35. David Simon wrote a touching obituary here (3) 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/reviews/971123.23moslet.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/reviews/971123.23mosle... 2. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17690092?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17690092?book_show_act... 3. http://davidsimon.com/deandre-mccullough-1977-2012/ http://davidsimon.com/deandre-mccullough-1977-2012/

Bulkington 12y ago
RE: Baltimore Who knew there's a vibrant ubran culture devoted to riding wheelies on motorcycles down major avenues, with crowds gathered on the sidewalk and all waiting for the police chase to begin? I recommend the movie reviewed below. Still not sure what it says about poverty and race in the US. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/movies/12-oclock-boys-documents-dirt-bike-riders-in-baltimore.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/movies/12-oclock-boys-docu...
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Mostly it says poor people are bored stiff and will do stuff for fun just like anybody else.

fuzzywalrus 12y ago

Pretty small sample size (most due to it being limited to Baltimore) but a nice read. None of the results are surprising, children from poor families remain disadvantaged throughout school and thus the cycle of poverty continues... :/ The most revelatory statement was the inherited job networks that that the disadvantaged white males had over the other children.

MoonHarvest 12y ago

This is by far the best article I've read about this study. Thank you for sharing. What most interested me was this quote about white children. "These children did not inherit college expectations. But they inherited job networks." I can verify this phenomenon using anecdotal evidence, where poor white children are expected to learn their parents' (generally their father's) crafts but not expected to learn anything beyond that. While my own college-educated parents passed down their respect and appreciation for learning to me, I saw some of my childhood friends' parents pass down their mistrust and apathy towards learning to my friends. I was not surprised when I came back from college one spring break and learned that one of my old friends (white, poor, no college, terrible home life) was currently on the lam for killing a teenager over a drug deal. I was shocked by the fact that I wasn't at all surprised. What bothers me more is how I can't relate to how hard life must be for this old friend, and especially how hard it is for primarily black children who inherit little but discrimination, through anything but anecdotes. I think this is more "friend guilt" than "white guilt." No one wants to see people they care for, or once cared for, victimized by systems beyond their control. Therefore, based again on my own anecdotal evidence, I'm glad this study continues to receive attention.

danso 12y ago
> What most interested me was this quote about white children. "These children did not inherit college expectations. But they inherited job networks." I can verify this phenomenon using anecdotal evidence, where poor white children are expected to learn their parents' (generally their father's) crafts but not expected to learn anything beyond that. What a coincidence that I was just re-watching the second season of "The Wire", which focuses on the white side of Baltimore, albeit the low-privileged stevedores. From a scene: http://www.siliconvalleyfrogs.com/thewire/ep20.html http://www.siliconvalleyfrogs.com/thewire/ep20.html SOBOTKA: Your son... The oldest one, he goes to what school? DIBIAGO: Jason's at Princeton. SOBOTKA: Princeton. And after he graduates he's gonna do, what? DIBIAGO: Whatever he wants. SOBOTKA: Right, you sent him to Princeton to do whatever the fuck he wants. You know, back when we was kids, Danny Hay's father stole a case of cognac off a ship. 'Cept when he gets it home, it ain't cognac, it's Tang. DIBIAGO: Tang? SOBOTKA: Just invented. TV was saying it's what the astronauts drank on their way to the moon. You drink it, well... DIBIAGO: You could be an astronaut too. SOBOTKA: All summer long, that shit was all the hare kids drank, Tang with breakfast, Tang with lunch, Tang when they woke up scared in the middle of the night. What do you think they grew up to be? Stevedores. What the fuck you think? Something tells me Jason Dibiago will grow up and squeeze a buck the way his old man did.

wudf 12y ago

Check out the Up Series if you find this interesting. Video interviews with English kids from age 7 to 56. "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

I'm confused. Who's to say the 1st-grade experience was critical? Did it change by high school? Maybe its the high-school years that are critical, and in these children circumstances were unchanged. Just sayin, without varying something there's no pinning a date on it. "Fix this by 1st grade or its too late" is what it sounds like.

gshubert17 12y ago

Mortality [0] among Americans from ages 6 to 28 was about 1.1% in 2010. Take the sum of male and female living at age 28, divided by the sum of those living at age 6. That's about 99%. The change in the number of survivors is the mortality rate. That would be about 9 individuals in the sample size of 790. During the period of the study mortality would have been a little higher, since life expectancy has increased about 6 years since the early 1980s. But the study counted 26 deaths (that they knew about). Being poor's a killer. [0] http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

canadev 12y ago

I really enjoyed this article (in a sad sort of way). I read an article in the NYT that was sort of similar about a month ago (just looked it up: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-is-a-hard-life-inherited.html?ref=opinion http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kr...). Now, I really don't know a whole lot about these subjects, but it strikes me that a basic income system would serve society as whole very well here. In fact, I've always had a theory that the best way to do things would be what I call a "relaxed meritocracy." Basically: everyone has access to housing, food, medical care, and education at a decent standard -- the bare minimums for life, plus a little bit on top so that it's not horrible. (Like living at a dorm room in university.) Then, capitalism on top. Incentive to do well, and the freedom to experiment with stuff that may just crash-and-burn. And nobody is ever well-and-truly left behind. Can someone please poke holes in why this would be a bad idea?

Vjdjcjdjfhc 12y ago
As long as the patricians view those below them as subhuman failures, they will never allow it. They think that if someone is not just like them, it must be because of some grievous personal fault.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Or, you know maybe we could have a working example first, in a tiny country like Sweden.
  - afafsd 12y ago
    Or how about remote Aboriginal communities in Australia? If you want to see what giving people just enough money to live on looks like, check out our remote Aboriginal communities where the government hands out enough money to live (mediocrely) on to everybody, so what's their incentive to get a job? What's their incentive to do anything? The results? Well the worst one is massive substance abuse problems. If they can't get booze, they sniff petrol. Actually for the most part they sniff petrol and drink booze. Highly educated creative-class people are the minority who can deal with free money without getting sapped of initiative, because (a) we tend to get satisfaction from work and (b) we can earn substantially more by working than by not working. But for someone at the bottom end of society who couldn't earn more than minimum wage anyway, granting them minimum wage for doing nothing is probably the worst possible thing you can do to them. Even if some choose a life of honest toil for slightly more money, vast numbers will choose a life of idleness and substance abuse.

jbuzbee 12y ago

From my own experience, expectations have a whole lot to do with where your life goes. In my house, there was never any question that my siblings and I would go to college as certainly as we went from 1st to 2nd grade. There was never any discussion otherwise. And now that I have kids, the same is true. College is the next step after High School as certainly as High School is the next step after Middle School. Looking back to my High School days, I see friends that didn't grow up with these family expectations and see that their life-path has been more difficult than mine. I recall difficult times in my own college days when I pondered dropping out to take a blue-collar job, but I knew what my family expectations were. I continued on when others with different expectations would have quit and ended up with the menial job I considered taking myself. I'm not sure how the schools can raise expectations of these kids when they have some many negative role-models around. It's a tough problem.

UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
I'll completely disagree college should be necessary. It is this kind of thinking that leads people who have plenty of job skills but no college education to feel like a failure in life. From what I've seen personally, there are a real lot of factors that keep the poor poor. Probably too many to count. College education in and of itself isn't remotely enough. There's also "life skills" (for lack of a better word) that are not emphasized. I grew up poor and I now work in an office with people who grew up middle class. I sometimes find it difficult to relate to them.

afafsd 12y ago

This kind of shit is why I'm pro-abortion but anti-choice. It's clear that the lower classes are doing a terrible job of raising their own children, despite the best efforts of the rest of society to educate them, they can't escape the terrible values and role models imparted to them by their parents. And yet... >Before they turned 18, 40 percent of the black girls from low-income homes had given birth to their own babies

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
prawn 12y ago
Perhaps if people didn't try to prevent sex education or access to free birth control? Instead some are pushing abstinence like it will reliably happen.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Teenage pregnancy in the first world has little to do with either sex education or values. Having kids is the default mode of people. The instinct to reproduce is suppressed in the wealthier class, because they have a huge opportunity cost to do so. Poor people don't have much of an opportunity cost, and indeed have economic incentives to have kids (more welfare support). 60% of girls in the study didn't have kids as teenagers, yet only 4% of the whole sample went to college. It wasn't like the people gave up a lot by having kids.
  - jnazario 12y ago
    > Teenage pregnancy in the first world has little to do with either sex education or values. i don't know where you get your ideas but they do not jive with many more learned observations than yours. http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2012/03000/Comprehensive_Sex_Education_for_Teens_Is_More.5.as%20%20px http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2012/03000/Compre... Comprehensive Sex Education for Teens Is More Effective than Abstinence http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeature&featureID=1041 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeatu... National Data Shows Comprehensive Sex Education Better at Reducing Teen Pregnancy than Abstinence-Only Programs http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/250073 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/250073 The Effects of Sex Education on Teen Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080319151225.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080319151225.ht... Comprehensive Sex Education Might Reduce Teen Pregnancies, Study Suggests http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S Kathrin F. Stanger-Hall, David W. Hall PLoS One. 2011; 6(10): e24658. Published online 2011 October 14. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024658 related: http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-education-does-not-lead-to-abstinent-behavior/ http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-educati... Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/11/30/uga-study-higher-pregnancy-rates-in-states-with-abstinence-only-ed-programs-in-schools/ http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/11/30/uga-study-... UGA study: Higher pregnancy and birth rates in states with abstinence-only sex ed programs in schools

mrborgen 12y ago

I suspect todays kids will be even more victims of their upbringings, and that this trend simply is instoppable. Scary. Even here in Norway, where equality is the highest deed, the classes are increasingly moving away from each other..

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lazyant 12y ago

"These people are just lazy, they have color TVs in their houses. In America anyone can make it if you work hard". Literally what a friend-of-a-friend told me about why she was voting Republican, seems to be a recurring cliche but as an European my jaw dropped. (She was a white girl with rich parents btw).