Dear Editor,

We must stop relaxing or abandoning our moral standards and ethical principles in order to please different sets of people who are hell-bent on having their own way, while expecting others to extend and treat them as if they had not committed an offence to what is the normal of the majority.

With that said, high schools are designed to educate, nurture, and guide children into becoming adults. It was not, and should not become, designed to accommodate and encourage adult activities and lifestyles such as walking around on the school compound in front of children with big pregnant bellies. That would not be sending good signals to those children within the school who have decided to be and act like children until they graduate.

Yes, I know that every pregnant schoolgirl will have a schoolboy who got her pregnant, providing that she wasn’t having sex with an adult. However, the one who has the big belly walking around the school will be the one the other children will definitely know was acting like an adult. On the other hand, the one who got that someone pregnant will not have anything obvious carrying around the school for other children to know that he was not acting like a child. Hence, the schoolboy has no overt contribution in the tarnishing of the school’s moral standards and ethical principles as would the schoolgirl — unless, of course, the school decides to announce what the boy did to the entire school population.

I always say that the one who is visibly going to be seen carrying a child for nine months, because of biology, must be the one who pays far more attention to who that individual has sex with, and has a greater duty to take preventative steps to avoid negative consequences, such as teenage pregnancy. In this case, the females are those such persons.

I am not saying that she should not continue her education after she gives birth to her child, but what I am saying is that she should do so in another school. In that new environment the students do not have to know abut her missteps.

The schoolboy who got her pregnant, however, should not be unscathed. While dismissal from the school is not the answer, he should be made to understand that he will have to start sacrificing many of his childhood privileges in order to be a father to his child, and this includes things like reducing his lunch money and allowance in order to assist the parents of that schoolgirl to maintain the child.

Also, a system should be in place that keeps track of, and mandates that the schoolboy continues to care for his child after he has graduated from high school. His tertiary educational opportunities could also be delayed or the method extended until the girl he got pregnant has successfully made it through the secondary educational system at that other school.

That is my take on it. Deviance must be dealt with as visibly as the deeds committed and the school population is to understand that it is not OK, but rather a misdeed.

Garth ‘Sub-Zero’ Allen

excellentsub@hotmail.com