One of the other teachers in our school has been playing the flour baby game. You know the one. Students walk around carrying a sack of flour for the week. The kids dress the flour up and bring it to their classes. They can pretend to be married to other students or to be single parents. Of course this simulation is about as realistic as say practicing swimming in a desert, but the kids certainly enjoy it and love to disrupt classes with the various baby comments. I try to do my best to play along, shouting out that so-and-so's baby is crying but apparently today a student was suspended because she "murdered someone's flour baby." HA! Real consequences for imagined responsibility. How likely is the suspended student to come and get her homework after school?

On the radio on the way into school this morning, I was listening to NPR and some "liberal" churches in the West are starting to offer a course that encourages abstinence but exposes kids to preventive measures such as condoms and birth control. The conservative groups found these church programs to be radical and insist that they send mixed messages.

Meanwhile, we have several spring pregnancies and an abundance of STDs, HIV-positive and who knows what we have that's undetected or unknown.

Most states insist on abstinence as the only discussion a teacher may have with a student. Most students meanwhile are sexually active by about 14. It's so frustrating to live in a country that creates policies that hurt the population they intend to serve. Is it intentional?