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Apparently there is a popular middle school home ec assignment (wait, it's not called home ec anymore ... Family and Consumer Science?) where students have to carry special baby dolls with them wherever they go for 24 hours.
These baby dolls will "go off" screaming at any time without warning and may or may not stop if you hold them, rock them, feed them, whatever. The idea is for the eleven year old child to learn what having a baby is "really like."
I think this whole assignment is offensive on many levels.
1) In the first place, if this is supposed to be a learning experience, it is a very pale and shallow one, at best.
It would be ten times more useful and interesting to arrange for the students to spend a few afternoons at my house and just kind of go through some of our daily activities while chatting together and getting a chance to do a few things like feeding a baby, changing a diaper, playing with a three year old, whatever.
I wish I could have done something like that when I was younger, and I would be the first in line to volunteer if anyone nearby has a kid this age they want to send to me!
2) The impliation that having a child, raising a child, being a parent, and caring for a baby basically amounts to having something inanimate annoying the hell out of you at inopportune moments is ridiculous as well as insulting.
3) Even though no one actually says this (although who knows, maybe they do), it's obvious to me that the main point of this assignment is to teach pre-teens that babies are a big pain in the ass, and since sex causes babies, well sex doesn't seem too appealing anymore, now does it?
Ick.
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5 comments:
I so agree with you! They used to do that around here, but stopped because the students found ways to manipulate the system inside the baby so as to avoid having to take care of it. Good lesson, huh?
Hey Jen~
I don't really see it that way. In fact, when I was young and in school, I thought it sounded like a cool idea. As far as your #3, I thought that was precisely the point...if you can't deal with the results, don't do it!
~Chris
Jennifer
You make statements that make you seem very closed minded. My son brought one of those babies home. He also has siblings. He learned the hard side of having a baby. Your comments about talking to and playing with a child are the best part of children. The inconvence is the whole point. For projects like this to be successful parents have to be involved, make sure that the baby is NOT turned off, and talk about the 24/7 job a wiggly live person requires.
You should becareful what you say about what is taught in a public school.
I am a home ec teacher (yes, I call myself a "home ec" teacher because most people don't know what the heck "life skills" or "family consumer science" means), and I wholeheartedly agree with you! I can't stand the stupid dolls. In theory, they are supposed to do what you said - teach what an overwhelming responsibility parenting is, connect parenthood with sex, hope kids realize sex = bad idea. In reality, most of the kids are more excited and happy about getting to dress up their dolls - and about the attention they get from carrying them around - than they are bothered by the demands of their care. I saw this during my student teaching, during my practicums, and when I myself was in high school. In fact, over the past decade and a half since these computerized dolls have become popular, no significant impact on the teen pregnancy rate among the students who have used them has been found in any scientifically designed study published in a peer-reviewed journal.
My parenthood "life skills" project of choice is the egg. In my last school we had way too many kids in our Child Development classes for any more than a fraction of them to use the dolls, so I proposed using eggs to the other CD teacher (I was in my first year of teaching, she in her 25th). She went with it, but at the end of the project told me she thought it was a failure because only about half a dozen kids made it through the four days with their egg intact. I told her it was a fabulous success - that's what's supposed to happen! Teenagers are not ready for the responsibility of caring for something so fragile and completely dependent as another life! Her response was "Oh, now I get it..." In my current school I am the only Home Ec teacher, and when my principal proposed buying a few of these contraptions I immediately shot down the idea. What an incredible waste of money.
So many people believe that the more technology you implement in an educational endeavor, the more successful it will be. That's as insane as it is ridiculous. People did learn before electricity and batteries.
Sorry for the length of this comment/rant, but I'm always glad for an opportunity to express my "professional" opinion on this topic!
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