by Dottie Cooper

Created on: December 01, 2008

American society is increasingly feeling the pressure to compete with foreign countries in order to increase student performance in areas like math and science. Some international students even know more about American history than children born here do. The problem is that while the bar continues to be raised academically, an important part of the high school curriculum is steadily fading away-family and consumer science-while a highly publicized but little acknowledged problem continues to evolve-teen parents.

Family and consumer science, home economics, family design. All of these were once names for classes that dealt with the practical art of raising a family. In these classes, students learned basic cooking and cleaning skills, how to wash a load of laundry, how to make and follow a budget, how to balance a checkbook and what a credit card really meant. Additionally, they learned about child development from birth to about seven years old. We probably remember the little experiments of carrying five pound flour sacks or eggs around pretending they were children. While these classes were often considered electives and not required of the "college prep" track students, their value should not be overlooked.

The unfortunate reality is that high school graduation rates have been falling for a number of reasons, including teenagers leaving school to have a child and trying to support it. While it is fact that the majority of students in high school will not become parents as high school students, those who do often find it easier to leave school and get a minimum wage job rather than face the challenges of raising a newborn and completing school work at the same time. Some programs do exist to help teen parents to get their high school diplomas, but these are often scoffed at as a burden on the tax payer or as an encouragement to teens to have children.

If students have the opportunity to be involved in what is essentially a life skills class early on in high school, it may be possible to avert many of the issue our society is faced with right now. Informed individuals, no matter what the age, are typically more conscientious in the decisions they make. In a consumer and family science class, a student may learn financial skills that are rarely taught in general math. The results may be numerous. Students in their second or third year of high school are getting to the age where they want to have a job, a car, and must take on the responsibilities that come along

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