90 Girls Pregant At 1 Memphis High School

[Anarky]

Condoms for the love of god

[Eric]

Well if I was still 16 or 17 I'd know who's High School dances I'd want to go to.

But yeah jokes aside, condoms.

[Imakeholesinu]

Condoms? Please, this all starts at home. The parents are to blame. Obviously if they asked their kids where they were going this wouldn't have happened or sat down and explained to them what sex is and what it is to raise a child.

Either that or they all want to be on Teen Mom on MTV.

[Shrinweck]

People fuck. You can't expect parents to always be around and constantly controlling once children are older. This is certainly a failure in education on the school and parents part, though. For god's sake it's so easy to get condoms just about anywhere and if that isn't available then it's clearly obvious who's at blame.

[Imakeholesinu]

I'm not talking about constant control 23 hour lockdown from parents, but asking your kids where they will be, who they are with, things like that could have reduced this. I understand people fuck, I got some action over the weekend, but I used a condom because I don't want a little me running around and I was educated by my parents to use protection. Clearly, these 90 expectant mothers, over half will not see a dime from the baby daddy and I bet 3/4 of that half never see the baby daddy again.

[Flip]

You were just dying to tell your story of getting laid.

[Imakeholesinu]

Not really.

[Shrinweck]

This thread is now about you getting laid. Face it.

[Eric]

Details Imakeholesinu, go.

[Shrinweck]

There's gotta be some kind of joke involving his forum nick name...

[Imakeholesinu]

Yeah *cocks pistol* I make holes in u *unloads into Shrinweck*. The joke...just passed through you.

And the details are just that. I was at my normal watering hole celebrating a Packers victory and mourning a Blues loss and people watching. Cute girl approaches me, we strike up a conversation, turns out it's her birthday, one thing leads to another and she leaves my place about 9:30am the next morning.

[Flip]

no brunch!?

[Zeus]

People fuck. You can't expect parents to always be around and constantly controlling once children are older. This is certainly a failure in education on the school and parents part, though. For god's sake it's so easy to get condoms just about anywhere and if that isn't available then it's clearly obvious who's at blame.

In a matter like this, it's not about controlling, it's about providing nurturing, guidance, and a general sense of comfort for your children should they need some. Your job is just being around every day being a good parent, not being around to stop them when shit's about to happen. Like anything else in life, it's all about preventive action not reaction once the seed is sown or deed is done.

However, there were a couple pieces of info in this particular story we shouldn't forget about:
- it's a low-income neighbourhood where almost everyone qualifies for free lunch
- it's a known problem in the community in general there

It's no secret that low-income teens are FAR more likely to become pregnant than middle-class or above. The reason is quite simple: money. You get extra coin from the government if you have kids, extra welfare. Whether it's the US or Canada, it's the same issue. And in lower-income neighbourhoods, what do these girls have to look forward to once they hit high school? What's gonna stop them from getting pregnant? University/college? Unless they're lucky enough to get a scholarship, which will be a very small percentage, no chance. A high-paying job? Pfft, where? McDonalds? With the parents generally not around for many reasons (including working their tails off being a fry-bitch at McDonalds and Wendys 16 hours a day just to be poor) and no real incentive not to get pregnant, why should they stop? At least they get money this way and have something to do.

Also, how many of these girls have parents who are under 35? Anyone ask that question?

[Blotus]

no brunch!?

Yeah, what kind of monster are you?

[Imakeholesinu]

See! Zeus sees my point.

To all of you horn dogs, no, all I had was beer and booze in my fridge. I offered to go get something and bring it back but she didn't feel like eating at all.

[Shrinweck]

Hey I was just on board for the jokes, I never wanted any details :P

As for Zeus' post this is all way too close to the sociology classes I take on a regular basis for me to care enough to comment.

[Anarky]

[SineSwiper]

University/college? Unless they're lucky enough to get a scholarship, which will be a very small percentage, no chance. A high-paying job? Pfft, where?

You can have no money to your name and still get a student loan. And then you get the high-paying job.

[Zeus]

University/college? Unless they're lucky enough to get a scholarship, which will be a very small percentage, no chance. A high-paying job? Pfft, where?

You can have no money to your name and still get a student loan. And then you get the high-paying job.

What dreamy-dreamland do you live in? First, they're not going to get into any school worth it's salt without a scholarship. And second, so many people have a "whatever" college/university degree that it's become nothing more than a minimum requirement as opposed to a selling point for a potential employer.

Not too many of these kids can afford a life of debt on a lightning-strike chance of getting a decent-enough paying job to pay down those loans before they retire.

[SineSwiper]

University/college? Unless they're lucky enough to get a scholarship, which will be a very small percentage, no chance. A high-paying job? Pfft, where?

You can have no money to your name and still get a student loan. And then you get the high-paying job.

What dreamy-dreamland do you live in? First, they're not going to get into any school worth it's salt without a scholarship. And second, so many people have a "whatever" college/university degree that it's become nothing more than a minimum requirement as opposed to a selling point for a potential employer.

Not too many of these kids can afford a life of debt on a lightning-strike chance of getting a decent-enough paying job to pay down those loans before they retire.

Better than working at a fucking McDonalds.

It's not a "lightning-strike change" of getting a decent job. Just go to the local university. It doesn't have to be fucking Harvard or Yale. University of Louisville over here works just fine. The price (last I looked) was around $100-120 a credit hour. That will probably net you about $10K in debt for a bachelor's degree. That's less than a car. It can be paid off in a few years. Yes, many other people have gone to college, so it's not like you can instantly get a job, but I guarantee that the first one you get is going to be better than working at a fucking McDonalds.

Don't be so melodramatic about it. People like you are the reason why poor people stay poor. Which is ironic considering you've already busted your ass in college to become an accountant.

[Zeus]

Better than working at a fucking McDonalds.

It's not a "lightning-strike change" of getting a decent job. Just go to the local university. It doesn't have to be fucking Harvard or Yale. University of Louisville over here works just fine. The price (last I looked) was around $100-120 a credit hour. That will probably net you about $10K in debt for a bachelor's degree. That's less than a car. It can be paid off in a few years. Yes, many other people have gone to college, so it's not like you can instantly get a job, but I guarantee that the first one you get is going to be better than working at a fucking McDonalds.

Don't be so melodramatic about it. People like you are the reason why poor people stay poor. Which is ironic considering you've already busted your ass in college to become an accountant.

$10k is an obscene amount of money for someone who's monthly rent is subsidized by the government. And where are they gonna get that $10k to begin with? A loan? Who the hell would give them that money? Family? They're living in the same subsidized housing. This is why I mentioned scholarships, it's really the only prayer a lot of these people have. And that's simply the reality of their situation.

Now I agree with you, you still have to put forth the effort and do your best to get out of it by doing whatever you can. You can't just sit back and accept your fate like that without a fight. If that was the case, my family would all be welfare-toting immigrants instead of middle- and upper-middle class families. Mind you, it was a fuck-lot easier back then to get a loan and get started, at least up here. Nowadays you can't even get a loan unless you first prove you don't need it (that's not even an exaggeration in any way, that's how fucked-up our banking system is). But it's our jobs as their children to build upon their work and make sure our kids also have a better life than we did just like we were over our parents. But it's not just effort, there's also an infrastructure issue that's even more prominent down there than up here.

I'm not sure how it is down there, but up here, colleges have trades-type or support-type programs with universities being the "higher learning" centres. Colleges are more hands-on, universities are more theoretical and for analyst-type jobs in offices (vs processing clerks). It depends on the type of career you wanna pursue. Universities are obviously far more expensive than colleges (triple or so on average; and it's getting worse with the relaxing of subsidies). So yeah, you can learn to become a nurse, electrician, bookkeeper, etc., in college for $10k but if you wanna become an engineer, accountant, financial analyst, etc., you gotta got the $30k university route (with some exceptions). University is quickly becoming out of reach for a lot of people up here after many years of being able to go to uni for under $10k.

And I busted my ass far more after university during the certification process than I ever did at school. School was the easy part.

[SineSwiper]

$10k is an obscene amount of money for someone who's monthly rent is subsidized by the government. And where are they gonna get that $10k to begin with? A loan? Who the hell would give them that money? Family? They're living in the same subsidized housing. This is why I mentioned scholarships, it's really the only prayer a lot of these people have. And that's simply the reality of their situation.

Anybody can get a education loan. Anybody. Any single person. And you don't have to pay it off until after you graduate. See, they are banking on the fact that you're going to get a good-paying job and be able to pay off the loan that way, and accept the risk that if you drop out, you will hopefully still pay it off.

Hell, the Hope tax credit pays for a good chunk of your student expenses, anyway. And I keep forgetting that you're in Canada, but I guess it's a lot easier to get higher education over here. That's a damn shame, considering how progressive Canada usually is.

[Zeus]

Anybody can get a education loan. Anybody. Any single person. And you don't have to pay it off until after you graduate. See, they are banking on the fact that you're going to get a good-paying job and be able to pay off the loan that way, and accept the risk that if you drop out, you will hopefully still pay it off.

Hell, the Hope tax credit pays for a good chunk of your student expenses, anyway. And I keep forgetting that you're in Canada, but I guess it's a lot easier to get higher education over here. That's a damn shame, considering how progressive Canada usually is.

In Ontario, we do have a program called OSSAP (Ontario Secondary School Assistance Program, if I'm not mistaken) where you can get a loan....if you're family doesn't make too much money. But for those up here who do get it, it's not uncommon to come out of your 4-year program with $40k+ in debt, even more if you went to school outside your hometown. That's a prohibitively large sum of money for a lot of people and even if they do get yuppie-type jobs, they still spend 10-15 years paying it off after you factor in living expenses. And like we talked about before, that's assuming that you even get a job with the degree you got, which is certainly not a sure thing anymore. It's a very, very large risk with a half of a lifetime worth of debt at the optimistic end.

Don't let the perception of Canada as being "progressive" fool you too much. We are a very accepting society when it comes to different cultures, yes, but there's a lot more shit we have to deal with than you guys do when it comes to our politics/infrastructure. For one, we have absolutely horrible banking regulations here. The banks can do whatever they want, and that's not much of an exaggeration. There's no real competition to the big 5 (some credit unions but they're minuscule) so they don't even try to get your business (other than mortgages and investments). They treat you as if it's a privilege for you to put your money in their bank. They charge you up to $3 to take as little as $20 out of your bank account (if you use a machine that's not your home bank's). They can also put a bad debt rating on you for a single one day late payment on a loan (it actually happened to me). All of them will not grant you a loan unless you can prove you have readily-saleable assets (ie. mutual funds, savings, house) to cover the entire debt whenever they call it - in other words, you have to prove you don't need the money before you can get some.

I've wasted far too many MB bitching about the telecommunications regulations up here. So other than bringing up the recent development which allows Bell/Rogers, the ex-monopolies, to charge a per-GB rate for use on their networks (others are very regulated as to what they can build 'cause we don't want wires everywhere) thereby forcing their competition to follow their business model, I won't say any more. Then we get to our oligopolistic insurance industry which charges an obscene amount of money for insurance you're forced to have by law (car mainly). And then there's the taxes on your heat, hydro, and gas bills. That's right, taxes on basic necessities. In fact, in Ontario and British Columbia, those rates just jumped up by 8% and 7%, respectively, with the introduction of the harmonized sales tax (HST), which is a combination of federal and provincial (state) taxes into one tax. Of course, that meant that overnight a lot more items were being charged 8% more taxes than before while giving the corporations a tax break to "compete" and "encourage reinvestment in their business". Yes because there's so much proof that trickle-down economics works, particularly in a global economy where foreign ownership is the norm.....

I'll stop ranting now.