From Homeroom to Eternity

A new study by a trio of professors from the University of Minnesota found that 15 percent of teens surveyed expected to die young. Given what schools are teaching, that may not be too surprising.

Iris Wagman Borowsky, Marjorie Ireland and Michael D. Resnick looked at data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health from 1995, 1996 and 2001-2002. They found that “At time 1, 14.7 % of 20,594 respondents reported at least a 50/50 chance that they would not live to age 35.”

“In adjusted models, illicit drug use, suicide attempt, fight-related injury, police arrest, unsafe sexual activity, and a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS predicted early death perception at time 2, time 3 or both.” Meanwhile, last year, Steve Baldwin and Karen Holgate discovered a new field of study that may track with these results in their book, From Crayons To Condoms: The Ugly Truth about America’s Public Schools.

What they learned was that, at many grade levels, schools are increasingly teaching courses about premature deaths. “Verification that these practices are fairly common was dramatically demonstrated for us while on a speaking trip in the Midwest,” Baldwin and Holgate write. “When the topic of death education and tombstone exercise came up, several people began to shake their heads; they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.”

“Finally, a woman stood up and walked into a nearby third-grade classroom.” That was not a typo: Third grade is what they wrote.

“When she returned, she asked us to accompany her to the classroom,” Baldwin and Holgate relate. “We did and sure enough—there were the children’s tombstones hanging from the classroom walls.”

“(The children in this classroom were surrounded with symbols of death all day long.)” Baldwin had served in the state assembly in California and sat on at least one committee that examined the state’s educational system.

Holgate’s bio identifies her as “a nationally known advocate for educational reform.” Still, their collective experience barely prepared them for educational trends such as this one.

“The number of classes about death, dying, and suicide is growing,” Baldwin and Holgate explain. “Yet, as with sex education, parents don’t always know that schools bury these topics in courses such as family life, health, or ‘career decision making.’”

“It isn’t unusual for children in elementary school to report classroom assignments in which they write epitaphs for their own tombstones.” For these children, Halloween does not necessarily begin on October 31 or end on November 1.

“Some children have had the dubious honor of going on field trips to the cemetery or to the mortuary,” Baldwin and Holgate report. The final irony, but very typical of most government policies, is that the forms of education that policymakers want to cut would go a long way towards stemming the “risky behaviors” that Borowsky and company find are giving teens morbid thoughts.

Specifically, abstinence education and Bible Studies, even the voluntary, after-schools come-as-you-are, clean up after yourselves kind, are about the only fields of study targeted for budget cuts and disciplinary action by school administrators and national politicians.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.