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When I was eleven, I went to visit my two girl cousins — one a year younger, one a year older — in Kent, Ohio. My aunt and uncle took us to the A&W drive-in, to a water park and to play mini-golf; in the backyard, we played wiffleball and stayed in the kiddie pool until it was dark, at which point we went inside, built forts and played dare-free games of Truth or Dare. Until then, I had never quite experienced wholesomeness. When I returned to Manhattan's East Village, where I had grown up reading Russian novels and stepping over bums on my way to school, I, so the story goes, bitterly greeted my parents by saying, "You didn't tell me that was going on."
This week, I went back to Northern Ohio for the first time in many years, to see if I could figure out what was going on at Timken Senior High School, where sixty-four of the 490 female students are pregnant. The numbers were teeming with potential: male students impregnating for sport, girls in a pregnancy cult, fertility drugs in the water.
A crotchety August 21 editorial in the Canton Repository started the media frenzy, condemning "faulty priorities." CNN found one girl who said that she knew about birth control, but just wanted a baby. A local Christian radio station, The Light, urged teenagers to keep their sexual feelings "asleep" by listening to gospel music rather than romantic pop songs. One of the station's personalities is the author of a book called Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry: Why Women Lose When They Give In. The fact that an abstinence-only program is reportedly in place at Timken has not stopped such virginity promoters from pushing their own versions, which have names like "Stay Strong."
The principal of Timken Senior High School, Kim Redmond, announced that she had "no idea" what had contributed to the extremely high teen-pregnancy rate at her school. Naturally, websites from Daily Kos to Drudge pounced. "Maybe that's part of the problem," dozens of bloggers snickered. "Maybe those teen girls could show her."
It's been a national running joke for days. There was the too-perfect matter of the school's team name: the Trojans. Someone's already floated the idea for an "I couldn't get laid at Timken High" T-shirt. When I told the gawky young rental-car counterperson why I was in Ohio, he put his hands up and said, "I didn't do it." The more you look, the more accidental jokes there are. My favorite was the sermon title on a church sign directly across from the school: "The Nature of Doing it Again . . . Again."
Canton is a third-tier industrial city that was briefly successful decades ago. The downtown area is decrepit and vaguely dangerous. On the main street, there are boarded-up buildings, stretches of trash-strewn grass, gas stations (Regular costs $3.09 a gallon), fast-food restaurants, churches and car dealerships. During the day, only a few people are walking along the main street at any time, and menace hangs in the air. During my three days there, men followed me through the streets several times. One pursuer stopped cold when he saw my notebook and asked if I was a caseworker. When he found out I wasn't, he hit on me.
Timken is one of two large schools in the city; the other is McKinley, which is set in a cozy tree-filled suburban neighborhood, right behind the Football Hall of Fame. Timken is set in an imposing, Germanic-looking building on the main street that runs through downtown. There are multiple outbuildings, including one very shiny new one. (More on that later.)
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| Timken Senior High School. |
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| The local Burger King. |
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| Mike and Brandi at the China Max. |
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| Kittie and family at the Canton Centre Mall. |
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| The rained-out county fair. |
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| A church sign across the street from Timken. |
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| From inside a Christian diner down the street from Timken. |
Tuesday was the first day of school. Roughly half black, half white and most relatively poor, a crowd of students poured into school wearing their best jeans and T-shirts (one showed a cartoon squirrel and had the caption "Protect Your Nuts"). Since the principal hadn't returned my calls or emails, I stopped by to see if I could make an appointment. I caught a glimpse of her practical haircut, matronly glasses and administrator jersey tucked into pants just before she started yelling at me. "I want this whole thing to be over!" she said. "I'm not going to talk to you, and I don't want you trying to talk to any of our students on the way out!" She then picked up the phone and spoke with someone about having me removed from the premises.
When I stopped crying (after writing for several years about people who are desperate for press, I'd forgotten what it's like to try interviewing people who really don't want to talk to you), I cut her some slack. It makes sense that she'd be defensive. To review: one in every eight girls, or more than 13%, of Timken's female population is pregnant. The national rate is 8%. In the U.S., teen-pregnancy rates have been steadily dropping since 1991, declining 30% between that year and 2002. This makes Timken a sexual reactionary among American high schools.
Several girls I met had left Timken this year because of all the pregnancies, creating a kind of "childless flight" that has had the same depressive effect "white flight" had on cities in the '70s. One girl named Kayla went to Timken for ninth grade and half of tenth grade, but transferred to a school in nearby Massillon this year. We had French-vanilla cappuccinos around the corner from her apartment complex, at the Variety's Restaurant where she'd recently applied for a part-time job.
"I didn't like seeing pregnant teenagers everywhere I turned," she said of Timken. Kayla is a good girl, bright and friendly. The last time she got in trouble at home — where she's raised by a single mom and has two older brothers looking out for her — was on a Sunday, when she broke her curfew, which is eleven
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"We don't have sex ed," said one girl in an improbably tight T-shirt.
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p.m. "I was with my friend Jamie at the park. He went to kiss me, and I was all, no. Then the cops came by at one-thirty in the morning and brought me home. My mother said, 'Do I have to have an unexpected surprise nine months from now?' I was like, 'Ew.'" She says nothing happened in the park that night with her friend, and nothing would. "I still think boys have cooties," she said.
At Timken, Kayla wore a T-shirt approximately once a week that read, "Abortion is Homicide." It's a prevalent belief in Canton. When asked why everyone at Timken was pregnant, Kayla cited boredom and lack of alternatives. She also said that in the two years she was there, she received no sex education.
In the three days I spent stopping dozens of Timken students on the blocks around the school (sorry, Principal Redmond), at the nearby Burger King and at the two area malls (Canton Centre and Belden Village), I received confirmation of this from every student. At a recent press conference, school-district superintendent Dianne Talarico announced that Timken has offered abstinence-only education for the past few years. But the students I spoke with claim it has been implemented scarcely, if at all.
"We don't have sex ed," said one girl in an improbably tight T-shirt, point blank.
"Sex ed? Oh, I think we talked about it in health class once," said her friend.
"I heard you can go to Planned Parenthood, but no one does," said one of several students hanging out on benches at the mall; her friends nodded.
About Planned Parenthood: the organization has been persona non grata in the school district since 2002. It was not invited to participate in the Canton City Schools pregnancy task force, which was established last February. (Locals have known about the high pregnancy rate at Timken for at least the past year.) That may change. "I'm preparing to submit a grant proposal that — if approved — will allow us to implement our community-wide pregnancy prevention public awareness media campaign," said Joanne Green, the community relations coordinator of Planned Parenthood of Stark County. "We are hopeful and believe there is a strong community need for such a program."
But the group probably shouldn't hold its breath, especially given who's building those fancy new outbuildings at Timken High: the Timken family, industrialists made rich by the manufacture of machine-lubricating ball bearings. William R. Timken, Jr. delivered such a large swath of Ohio (and hundreds of thousands of dollars) to the Bush campaign that many in the community have said the Timkens were a — if not the — deciding force in the outcome of the 2004 election. President Bush made Mr. Timken the ambassador to Germany shortly thereafter.
After my non-meeting with Ms. Redmond, I went to calm down at the bleak Burger King around the corner. An American flag hung over white bricks; the general color scheme was beige on brown on beige. There, I met Steve Adams, the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood, who spends his days yammering over coffee with his elderly friends, some of whom appear to be homeless. He worked at the steel mill for thirty years and smoked crack before he found God and opened a Christian coffee shop called the Turnaround.
"Of course she threw you out," said Mr. Adams. "My sister teaches there. They're sick of hearing about it. The thing is with these girls, their parents don't want them around because they want to smoke the dope. So they give them money, and they go out and do whatever they want. These kids are out in the street at two, three in the morning. There's nothing to do in this town. You don't see too many stores. It's all restaurants and bars."
While his and others' claims about crack dealing and prostitution in Canton couldn't be confirmed, I can say that I was physically afraid even in a locked car when I swung by the nearby Canton Inn, rumored hub of trick-turning teenagers.
But neither Mr. Adams nor almost anyone else in the neighborhood evinced sympathy for the Timken teens. When I asked about the girls who are pregnant, I repeatedly heard:
"They're dummies." (From a guy at a local Christian diner, not Steve Adams'.)
"They don't protect themselves. They deserve what they get." (From a Dylan Kleboldish Timken student on the street.)
"They just want attention." (From a very eyelinered Timken grad who works at the T-Mobile kiosk at the Belden Village Mall). "It's the atmosphere. They think it's okay."
At one of the malls, I asked a group of Timken students where I could find a pregnant girl to talk with. "Shouldn't be hard," they said, smugly. It was, I should confess now, exceedingly difficult. At the beginning and end of the school day, most students were herded directly off and onto buses, flanked by teachers. I was chased from the school grounds by security guards twice. Several students promised to help me find a girl to provide a face to the shocking statistics; none called me.
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"You might be a terrorist," the security guard said, only partially joking.
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At times, I felt like I was on another planet, one where I was a dangerous criminal and the predatory men were model citizens. At the Belden Mall, a security guard said he'd been looking for me. I'd been reported for taking pictures of the family portraits on the wall of the food court. He informed me that cameras were "against mall regulations."
"Sure," I said, putting my camera away, "but why?"
"You might be a terrorist," the guard said, only partially joking.
In looking for Timken girls who were pregnant, it didn't help that big shirts and fast food are still fashionable in Ohio. I chased several Timkenites and hapless passers-by for blocks around the school in vain. At one point, I spotted a very pregnant girl as I was driving. By the time I parked, seconds later, she had disappeared. One mother told me over the phone that she would let her daughter speak with me — for a substantial sum of money. I started to feel like a creepy old man with a perverse fetish.
Luckily, at the mall there was no shortage of Timken graduates or drop-outs who had babies. I met a nineteen-year-old named Kittie at Canton Centre, where she and her husband were shopping with two children in tow: one her sister's, the other her own. Kittie's eldest was starting kindergarten that day.
Kittie got pregnant when she was fourteen and a student at Timken. That was five years ago, before it was all the rage. She had a hard time. "My friends pretty much disappeared," she recalled on a mall bench. "They were young and could still have fun." She went to Timken's GRADS class, which taught parenting skills. Then she dropped out and started cleaning houses, which she still does while her husband takes care of the children. But she plans to one day become a pediatric nurse, and she doesn't regret anything. "I've got my own place," she said. "I've got my husband [they were married in April after seven years together]. I've got my beautiful kids. I'm pretty happy."
Kittie is, of course, not what all those recently omnipresent magazine articles and books advising early procreation have in mind. Sylvia Ann Hewlett just wants young urban professional women to get pregnant at twenty-two rather than forty-two. And as obnoxious as she and her ilk are, they still suggest women should actually want to get pregnant in the first place. "Wanting" doesn't seem to enter into the equation much in Canton — they just don't not-want it bad enough to seek out information to prevent it from happening.
And it's no wonder apathy thrives. For fun, Timken students have the option of walking around one of the two malls, or up and down the main street, Tuscarawas West, which everyone calls "Tusc". The rained-out county fair, a few minutes' drive from Timken High, seemed like an excellent metaphor for life there. At the only place downtown with wi-fi access, my waitress said she'd never seen a laptop before, and stared at mine in wonder. None of the teens I spoke with had email addresses.
Passing the mall's China Max on Wednesday, I inadvertently interrupted a tender moment between the counterperson — a pretty black-haired girl named Brandi — and her all-American boyfriend Mike, who wore an Insane Clown Posse baseball cap backward and looked much younger than his twenty-four years. They were holding hands over the counter, deep in conversation, and looked completely in love. When they disengaged, I got some food and we chatted about Canton and New York, which they were eager to hear about. Finally, I asked them if they
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"It didn't even cross my mind to use condoms," said Mike, whose fifteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant.
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knew any pregnant Timken girls; they said they'd call me if they saw one.
I went over to eat in the food court. About ten minutes later, Mike came over and asked if he could sit down. He'd been thinking about something, he said. When he went to McKinley, his fifteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant.
"I dropped out and was working three jobs to support the child," he said. "I know kids ain't ready emotionally or physically to raise children on their own. I know I wasn't, and I let my education slip because I made a couple of dumb decisions. It didn't even cross my mind to use condoms. Not until she was . . ." He paused. "And I still didn't know how to react. I didn't even think it was real." Mike was sixteen. After all that, his girlfriend's parents banned him from their house and threatened to have him arrested if he tried to come back. "I haven't seen my son in a year," he said, and his eyes filled up with tears.
That night, I went back to Kent and stayed with my aunt and uncle. It was nice, with soft carpet and fresh sheets and the sounds of crickets and an occasional train whistle out the window.
My older cousin is now married and living in Cleveland, an hour from Canton. She and her husband are successful businesspeople. My younger cousin is also happily married to a terrific guy and living near her parents, thirty-five minutes from Canton, with three children. They represent the perfect realization of two paths into one's twenties: child-free and child-rich. The difference between them and, say, child-free Kayla and child-rich Kittie, is that my cousins chose their lives. They had good sex education, loving parents and water parks, and were able to control their futures. From what I can tell, most of the girls at Timken just fell into theirs, for better or more often worse.
Right before leaving to catch my plane, I made a last-ditch effort to meet a pregnant Timkenite. In the school parking lot, which I thought might be far enough away from the building to be fair game, I met a lovely curly-haired girl whose good friend was pregnant. We were chatting jovially when a security guard approached and threw me off the block, radioing my location to the other guards. As I climbed back in the car, four people with walkie-talkies streamed out of the building, heading toward me. The original security guard approached from the other direction.
Speeding away — or trying to speed, in my impotent Kia Rio rental car — from what I imagined might be jail time, I felt like a failure. I hadn't spoken to a single pregnant girl, as CNN had, and I didn't have the principal on record, as did the Canton Repository. But as some kind of campus vehicle with flashing lights turned back after following me for half a mile, my adrenaline subsided and I just felt relief that I would be back in New York soon. Timken High is a well-policed fortress; it's a shame the real threats — politically motivated ignorance and soul-crushing boredom — lie within its walls. n°
©2005 Ada Calhoun and Nerve.com
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Commentarium (38 Comments)
I don't like the intimation that the pregnancy rate is becuase there's nothing to do in the town. That's the number one complaint to kids everywhere, from NYC to Linton, ND, where I grew up. Let me tell you about Linton: one restaurant, one bar, one school, one grocery store. No stoplights, no malls, no movie theaters, no fast food, no video rentals, and more importantly, no headline spawning teen pregnancy rate. Linton's the biggest town for 100 miles in any direction, and there are many that are even smaller. I feel so sorry for the poor kids in Canton, who have "only" two malls and sex for amusement.
Word to the previous article. There must be nothing to do in New York City, either.
honestly, ada. crying because someone refused an interview? what kind of journalist are you?
I agree that the "there's nothing to do" line of reasoning is flawed. I find this piece overall condescending and low on content.
What a terrible, condescending article that undermines its examination of serious issues through cultural bigotry. Also, the attempts to villainize the school for not allowing the author on campus to talk with students are ludicrous. The last thing schools need are journalists showing up and interrupting things and talking to students who are probably so guileless and starry-eyed at the prospect of talking to the media that they might say things that they shouldn't or that aren't entirely true. It would have been far better to focus on key issues like the apparent lack of sex ed. and the failure of abstinence-only programs. Without such a focus, this article borders on drivel. It is perhaps my own ignorance, however, that I didn't realize that high school kids wouldn't be having so much sex if they all had laptops!
um, the "there's nothing to do" element is only one facet of the situation here. the piece also points out that that the pregnancy rate is attributable to timken's commitment to worthless abstinence-only education AND the town's direct line to the bush administration. i think this story did a better job in pointing that out than just about anything else i've read on the subject. to leave out the fact that the area is economically depressed and the kids have nothing better to hope for than to have families at the age of 14 would be DISHONEST - and it is not the only point of the piece!
I thought this was an interesting piece, but it seems to ignore an issue that flows directly out of the "nothing to do" problem: having a baby _is_ something to do. If you live in a boring town with no prospects, having a little baby all your own to love can look pretty appealing, espcially to a naive young girl who doesn't comprehend all that being a parent involves. Most people who have had a baby can tell you that when you're pregnant, you're special. Of course there's a difference between the way you're treated when you're a pregnant 30-year-old and they way you're treated when you're a pregnant teenager, but I suspect that some of the social sanctions against teen pregnancy are significantly weakened when so many other teenagers are pregnant, too. It's a shame (but not a surprise, given our current cultural climate) that sex ed has been so neglected, but sex ed programs--and even (especially) abstinence programs--need to address the fact that some teenagers may, on some level, _want_ to get pregnant. No one, in all the media coverage I've seen, has brought this up.
I'm a physician; I worked in a teen mom clinic in San Francisco, a city where there was plenty to do, lots of access to Planned Parenthood, and nearly universal and frank discussion of sex and birth control. Most of the pregnant teens I took care of were swayed by "magical" thinking: he'll love me if I have his baby, this is my ticket out of teenage hell, my mother can't treat me like a kid, I'll look cute with a little belly, and (my favorite) it's hard for me to get pregnant. That magical thinking also informs other teen disasters, such as risky drug experimentation, smoking, reckless drivng and attempting dumb stunts they've seen on tv. Though suggested only tangentially in this article, I believe that the Bush administration's own magical thinking, it's casual approach to truth and science, promotes this crisis. The Chair of the FDA committee on women's health just resigned in protest of the Bush-directed refusal to make emergency contraception availabe without prescription.
With all due respect, this was a poorly written and researched article. Your failure to speak with people who have insight to the problem is glaringly obvious.
Perhaps another attempt with better preperation is in order.
Very interesting subject, unreadable writing. Keep reporting, find yourself a good editor.
Clearly, a huge part of the problem is that there's no real sex education program. It should be glaringly obvious that abstinence only programs do not work and are a terrible disservice to young people.
Principal Redmond should be ashamed of her colossal failure to provide a comprehensive sex education program for her students. Beyond this atrocious teen pregnancy rate, all of these young people are at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. Principal Redmond can be emailed at the following address: redmond_k@ccsdistrict.org
No matter how this journalist feels about Ohio, she should learn to
keep the condescension out her voice and her reasoning. I'm fairly
certain that what Canton needs--if it needs anything--is not someone
from New York who is proud to have grown up "reading Russian novels"
(something she assumes no one in Ohio has ever done, or is capable of doing) coming in to tell its residents what they ought to want and whether or not they are really happy (as some of her interviewees claim they are).
This is so irritating. As a piece of investigative journalism, it offers nothing but an extended description of the impediments preventing the writer from getting at her story. As an essay, it comes off as condescending and judgmental. Why are so many writers on Nerve so completely out of touch?
Kudos to Ada for writing this article. She should not feel like a failure - she dove into a community that needs help and brought light to a problem that is ongoing - particularly for these young girls. I commend her for that. Although I believe the problem Ada is writing about is a fight against a society - this is a community where early pregnancy is not condemmed - abortion is. It's a very right wing conservative community that I'm not sure will ever embrace the idea of Planned Parenthood. In my opinion, the only way to stop teen pregnancy is walk these young girls into a clinic and show them that it's something easy to do - something they can do together - and something that is not going to condem them to hell. They need to know it's something they should be doing to protect their own bodies, and protect their futures. Because the overall consensus in this part of our nation is that it's a beautiful thing to become a mother - as soon as you possibly can. They think becoming a mother makes them responsible and mature. They need to know that this is not necessarily the case. Someone needs to tell them their are contraception methods that are not evil, which will eventually give them more choices for the future. Abstinence is not the only form of prevention - birth control is, at least when it comes down to a female protecting her own body. I left northern Ohio for NY and LA after high school, and am living the life I wanted - with plans for children and a family in the near future - maybe early thirties. I'm still in touch with some of my friends in Ohio. I can't keep track of the names of their kids. But they seem happy. They are living the life that I hope to live in ten years from now. And some are starting to divorce, some are single parents, and some are living happily, building homes and sending their kids to private schools. Can I say I am living a better life than the friends I left back home? No - because this is the only life I live and I am in no place to judge. But I know there was an epidemic - like drugs in schools. There is pressure to become a mother - a wife - to create a perfect Midwestern family - when you have no idea if you're ready. And I'm glad I was able to avoid it by a friend who took my hand and dragged me nervously into Planned Parenthood. Depo Provera, for one, is a godsend for preventing teen pregnancy - and needs to be more accessible to these girls. I think they are afraid of getting it - socially and religiously. In any case, thanks to Ada for her efforts and her article - every little bit helps and that was a courageous thing to do for these young girls.
Stick to Scanner, Ada. College newspapers have better investigative pieces than this.
I think all the previous negative feedback is remarkably stupid, particularly the criticisms for not being able to get at the people (that's kind of a major point of the piece, that the problem is within, not without, not to mention a good comment on the whole ludicrous bunker mentality of our society) or for crying (what's wrong with crying, Captain Macho?) The piece is completely interesting and the writer found out shitloads about the way it works and interviewed some fascinating and not all stereotypical sorts. All this defensiveness of a broken system apalls me. I didn't realize so many pro-abstinence pro-Bush idiots read Nerve.
The school exceeded the average, well what a surprise, that's what averages are all about. Some schools will have fewer pregnancies than average and others will have more. Is the amount that the school exceeded it statistically surprising? I doubt it. I have sympathy for the principal since she's the victim of a statistical oddity.
I just don't understand how this piece got published. Ada goes to Ohio, fails to get her story, writes it anyway. Has Nerve laid off all their editors?
And - if you are going to *pretend* to be a grown-journalist, please
a. Try to tell THE story, not YOUR story
b. Try not to cry. No one - no one - will respect you if you cannot at least maintain a facade of respectability.
Why did you feel the need to tell us that you cried, anyway? Are you just looking for symathy?
Gosh, BT, I didn't realize that disliking a piece of "investigative journalism" that was neither investigative nor journalism made me pro-Bush. Thanks for setting me straight. There's a good story lurking within all the palaver; unfortunately for Ada, (a) she's not a good journalist; and (b) the Canton Repository already made the same point much more succintly without all the smug New Yorkiness that made her article so insufferable to those of us not from the East Village. As for the crying, if Ada wants to play journalist, she needs to act like one. The principal was obviously stressed out and tired of interview requests; that Ada took her refusal personally is testament to her inability to put herself in other peoples' shoes. And the fact that she cried just makes her look immature.
For a first real piece of journalism I have seen in a long time I was pleasantly surprised with the article-- the fact that it was written, not necessarily the depressing subject matter. Kudos to Ada for going out there- in the mean, misogynistic, small-town-mentality world out there- and writing a piece showing that world in all its grotesqueness.
As for some people who posted on this board so far, wow, nerve, if I were you people I'd donate the money you receive from these conservative weirdos- incapable of giving any criticism of substance anyway- to Planned Parenthood.
And yes, kudos for you crying also. It shows you have heart, and it shows how terrible of a place you visited. I wish I heard of more journalists cry at the sight of ugliness, it's be a sign that our press is doing what it's supposed to do: dig in the dirt, reveal the dirt, be touched at its sight-- not just write insignificant stories about insignificant things, but finally something of substance about what actually influences people. Although, next time, if I were you, I'd take a photographer- female or male- with me if I were to venture into the depressing world of small-town conservative America. Two is safer than one.
You're right ATK, disliking a piece doesn't make you pro-Bush. It was your apparent stupidity that actually clued me in on that.
I graduated from a VERY small high school in central Ohio in 1989. Of the 36 female graduates, 7 had kids or were pregnant. Thats about 19%. I don't know what the percentage is today, but teen pregnancy has been an issue for a long time. And sex ed IS taught. I can only hope the parents of my old alma mater have taken action. That's where the ultimate responsibility lies.
ALTHOUGH CLOSE FAMILY TIES DO NOT MAKE AN OHIOAN OF ME, I MARRIED A GROVE CITY GIRL WHO WAS EDUCATED THERE AND THEN A FIVE YEAR NURSING DEGREE PROGRAM AT OHIO STATE. A DAUGHTER GRADUATED FROM OHIO STATE AND THEN SHE AND HER HUSBAND EARNED GRADUATE DEGREES AT KENT STATE. BOTH ARE TEACHERS IN ALASKA WHILE RAISING TWO OF MY GRANDCHILDREN, BOTH BORN ALASKANS. BEFORE I CONTINUE, LET ME SAY THAT YOUR ARTICLE HAS GIVEN SUBSTANCE AND INTENT TO WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING TO OUR REPUBLIC FOR THE PAST FORTY YEARS. YOUR WORK IS WELL RESEARCHED AND THOUGHTFUL. NOT MANY JOURNALISTS TODAY ARE BRAVE ENOUGH (OR UNDERSTAND ENOUGH) TO BE EXPLORING THE SAD, I SAY EVIL, CONDITIONS BEING FOIST UPON A NATION OF IGNORANT, NOT STUPID, ...IGNORANT CITIZENS. YOU SEEM TO BE THE ONLY PERSON WHO UNDERSTANDS THAT, AND HAS COURAGE TO WRITE ABOUT IT. PUBLIC EDUCATION IS NOT FAILING, IT IS BEING PURPOSEFULLY DESTROYED ALONG WITH THE LIVES OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. wHO KNOWS WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO STOP IT.
THE FINAL SENTENCE OF 'TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT'IS A PERFECTLY STATED SUMMARY JUDGEMENT UPON WHAT THE OVERWEENING GREED AND POLITICAL DUPLICITY NOW OBSESSING OUR "ELECTED" OFFICIALS IS WREAKING UPON ALL WHO HAVE LESS MONEY THAN THEY DO. THANK YOU FOR WRITING FROM A FOUNDATION BUILT UPON TRUTH. YOU BRING CHARACTER AND INTEGRITY TO THE CRUMBLING ART OF JOURNALISM. PRESS ON!
GODSPEED!
Gosh BT, you'd think such a brilliant mind as your own would be able to correctly remember three letters. I'd be delighted to hear why your august personage thinks I'm stupid. You're so awesome!
why the "third-tier industrial city" slam?
what, only NY qualifies as a cool city?
small towns are even less then third-tier and they can be very cool. there's a lot of towns in the U.S., do they all have to measure up to the standard of "first-tier industrial city"?
small wonder when all the Nude Yorkers showed up in Ohia to sway the vote, the Buckeyes were non-plussed. I would imagine an obnoxious New Yorker at the door, actually caused peeps on-the-fence to go Bush. Nice job at blowing it for the rest of the country, NY.
maybe there's a reason people find New Yorkers and their provinciality tedious ...
as far as the whole -- I couldn't get the story, so that's the story track -- it's an old, old ploy. the first time someone did it, it was novel. now, it's trite, which you think a hippity-hop New Yorker, bent on deconstructing every bit of culture that passes by, would not fall for. Maybe it's retro to do the couldn't-get-the-story-so-that's-the-story piece. I dunno, it feels so last-weeks-Trucker-hat.
Signed,
A Real Norwalk Trucker who gets his hats by trade.
P.S. I read Russian Novels in Grade School. I win. I'm smarter than you. I cried when they we were going to crush Herbie and Lindsay Lohan saved him. I win, I'm more sensitive then you.
I am deeply offended by all the gross, bigoted generalizations about small-town America and small-town Americans being thrown around on this board. I spent the first 18 years of my life in a small town -- to be precise, an economically depressed former oil boomtown in the presumed cultural wasteland of North Texas. Yes, the place is poor. True, there is a high teen pregnancy rate. But, the people there, taken as a whole, are neither more stupid nor more evil than people in large left-leaning cities.
To call these places misogynist is misguided and inaccurate. Yes, there were individuals who displayed sexist attitudes there (I can honestly state I've encountered an equal amount of sexism since moving to a city), but there were also the men and women who taught me to fight like hell for everything I wanted and deserved. I am, to my core, a product of that town, and I have never been a drop-out or a knocked-up teenager. Neither were most of my friends. Even those who have stayed in my hometown are interesting, intelligent people. And, while I know that some of their core values conflict with mine, I realize that they are not imbeciles or backwater hicks.
While the article at least managed to be a little subtle about its regional snobbery, some of the comments here lack even minimal subtlety. It may seem shocking, but the truism that people living in "red" voting districts are ill-informed and ignorant does nothing but undermine the efforts of those who would "enlighten" them. Very rarely do large numbers of people take kindly to being preached at, either by the likes of Jerry Fallwell or by often equally-self-righteous and bigoted leftists.
So, CK, how come you moved out? I find it slightly hypocritical that you have a lot of praise for small-town and yet as soon as you got the chance you moved out. Or maybe I am making assumptions here and you plan on going back after college (if the reason you left was education) and then my most humble apologies, but do let us know what your plans are.
I myself come from a small-town middle-of nowhere and I hate it, and I know what I'm talking about when I write that those people are misogynistic. (To be honest, I think Northampton, MA is a small town that can make many big cities look narrow-minded but that can be seen as the exception to the rule as I haven
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My intended point is that to generalize about people based on where they live is as backward as generalizing about people based on race or gender. I find it highly unlikely that you can prove that the entire population of any small town is misogynist. Your use of the phrase
To quickly answer your questions: yes, my parents- especially my father- were those people, many of my friends were those people. Heck, I had crazy ideas at that time, but I think it's because I didn't know any better; and why didn
I only work in Canton(and I could throw a rock and hit Belden Village Mall), but still find myself really offended by Ada's portrayal of it. It is a city, not a small town, and while it is depressed (go google how many good industrial jobs, including Timken, Canton has lost in the past 4 years), it is not the terrifying dump she writes about. As a New Yorker who supposedly walked over bums to school I would think her skin would be thicker, and her claims of fear are laughable to me, downtown may be sad (though not nearly as bad as she portrayed), but I can't say I have ever found it the least bit frightening in any sense, day or night, and my job takes me all over the city. I wonder where the boarded up buildings downtown she talks about are? As for lowlifes, I see worse walking down my own street in an urban-on-the-upswing renovation neighborhood in a nearby city every day, and they don't scare me.
How she could spend 3 days there and not find a single pregnant girl who would talk to her boggles my mind. I have to seriously question how she went about her search, and how hard she tried. Perhaps it was that NY "I know everything and I'm better than you and have come to judge your ignorant red state ways" attitude I smell in her essay. And her comparison to Kent is just silly, Kent is a college town, well educated for the most part and free thinking, in a different "class" from the third tier industrial city she describes Canton to be. Like comparing the proverbial apples to oranges.
It would have been nice to see her delve more deeply into the failure of abstinance only education, and the irony that a school that teachs it also has a curriculum that includes parenting classes, which I'm guessing our federal government is not funding.
Having a wife who is a teacher, it gets old when we regularly try to hold the schools responsible for teaching our children what we as parents are responsible for.
I would consider myself such a failure as a father if I let a school teach morals. I don't know what the morals of my kids teachers are... How can I cop out and rely on somebody else to do my job?
If there is a program that is not happening due to an increased frequency like the pregnancy in Ohio, then again PARENTS need to step up and ask for it. When 1, 5, 10, 30, 50, 100 passionate parents show up at the high school asking for something like this, it will happen.
Don't cop out on your kids and teaching them what is right and wrong. They will only repeat the cycle. Then where will be we headed? We've got great kids!!! Help them to be better!!!
In defense of Canton, who the writer and many of those offering commentary have described as "depressed," "a horrible place" and other similar negative phrases - I agree with the main point of the article, that teen pregnancy is a huge problem here, but I am seriously disturbed by her portrayal of the town. I moved to Canton from a rough neighborhood in Chicago a few months ago because I found big-city life violent, dirty and very unfriendly. I didn't like that it was unsafe for me to go out after dark; I didn't like the shootings and grand theft auto going on right outside my apartment window, and I sorely missed trees. I've been in Canton for a few months now and I LOVE it, and have not felt even remotely unsafe once. I'm very curious how someone from Manhattan managed to feel unsafe here. There are definitely some neighborhoods in Canton that aren't "pretty," and people that look a little rough around the edges, but it's nowhere near as unsafe or depressing as a metropolis like New York or Chicago, where one lives surrounded by concrete and isolated from neighbors. We have parks, trees, wildlife, and a lot of really nice neighborhoods with nice houses and big yards. As a full-time liberal myself, I really wish that other liberals who have spent their whole lives in big cities would stop judging everyone else as backwards and stupid and just start working to try to change the issues at hand. Midwest and country conservatives will never see the issues our way if we keep protraying their lifestyle so negatively; it just makes us (liberals) look like the bad guys.
Great article. I liked the author's honesty about crying when the principal kicked her out - journalism aint easy. The whole effect speaks to how many factors impact teen sex - religion, culture, politics, ignorance, boredom. Where to start?
An article like this just makes me smile. Rich, poor, liberal or conservative, those who deem themselves responsible for our youth's sex-eduaction, have all missed the boat. As a person who recently adopted a new born baby from a small town in the mid-west I just pray that these young women are offered the chance to place their babies for adoption. It is a positive experience for all parties involved. Adoption the other "A" word.
Ada,
I am a Timken High School Alumn, class of 1981. I still live in Canton, not far from the school, though most of my professional and social enterprises are in Cleveland.
I am disgusted by the situation at my dear alma mater and even more disgusted by the way it is being treated by most of the media, most of which is looking for ratings.
Your piece is, in my opinion, the most honest report I have read yet, and the most insightful.
I wish Kim Redmond would have talked to you, and when I see her I will tell her so.
Thank you for coming to Canton and telling the truth about the city and how the community is failing the Timken students. I appreciate what you did.
omfg i can't belive how naive these ppl are! if someone isn't taught options they only think one way! it makes me so mad i can't belive these closed-mined people still exsist. its just really sad.
That is the saddest story ever.
It's no wonder these kids are turning up pregnant. No one wants to help or care about them. It's so frustrating that a crappy town like that can't even teach them about condoms, or how to say no if need be!
I grew up in a crappy small town (canada) -pop 3000 - and even my uptight, religious, against sex before marrage parents made sure I knew what condoms were for. I was in grade 6!! What is wrong with Canton!!
Too much G.W.Bush influence??
Pregnant teens happen in all small towns, but not to that extent and sex education is usually pushed on those kids because of the statistics.
Canton is a sad, sad place for kids to grow up. I commend Ada Calhoun on her effort to research such a place.
I can't get over the security guards!! That made me laugh. The adults in that town need a slap in the face. Nice future they're building for the "children of tomorrow".
Uh, that's tapered roller bearings that Timken makes; ball bearings are something else.
Now you say something