Friday, December 21, 2007
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Britney Spears and her sister Jamie Lynn Spears - Talk about teachable moments.
Schools and Parents need to learn Character Skills then educate children to have character. What does it mean to be an Educated Person?

BEST PRACTICES IN CHARACTER EDUCATION
The modern character education movement emerged in the 1980s as a consequence of growing parental and public concern for moral drift. Two decades later, it is time to ask, What are the successes of the character education movement? What do best practices look like? This essay by Paul J. Dovre explores these questions through the study of character education in six schools. His conclusion: So far, character education programs that are carefully designed and implemented appear to be succeeding. Undeterred by philosophical disputes on the one hand and the preoccupation with academic achievement on the other, character education finds its strength at the grass roots, in those individual schools and communities where teachers, administrators, and citizens initiate programs designed to improve civility and citizenship -- legitimate goals in their own right. If research continues to show that comprehensive character education has positive effects on student achievement as well, then the movement may in time gain more robust political and financial support from education policymakers.

Just Be Your Own Person -  that is the definition of cool.
Adolescent Character Development - struggling with Social Pressure in the online and offline world.
Adolescent Empowerment: Teach, Discuss, & Learn to recognize the different kinds of pressure techniques.
How do you get manipulated? Learn to recognize when you are being manipulated.
Recasting the definition of a successful learner from one whose achievement is measured solely by academic tests, to one who is knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, civically engaged, prepared for economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond formal schooling.

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In schools and shopping malls and around the dining room table, the subject of teenage pregnancy and sex was suddenly and uncomfortably in the air as mothers and daughters and fathers, too, talked about — or tried not to talk about — the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who plays the perfect, well-liked and, it is understood, virginal teenage girl on "Zoey 101" on Nickelodeon.

High school girls here wondered aloud on Thursday why no one was talking about contraception. Parents across the country, on the other hand, commiserated over the Internet about how, thanks to Spears, they were facing a conversation with their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds about sex.

"Nowadays, nothing's safe, not even cartoons," Diana Madruga, who has an 11-year-old daughter, said as she wrapped up her shift as the manager of a Dunkin' Donuts here in the Boston suburbs.

Read More

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Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy poses parental dilemma

HIGH TEEN PREGNANCY RATE

The United States already has the highest teen pregnancy rate among the most developed nations and a national report in December showed the birth rate for teens rising in 2006 for the first time since 1991. The reasons are unclear.

Critics of the Bush government's emphasis on abstinence-only programs for teens seized on Jamie Lynn's pregnancy as another sign that the policy was not working.

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Pregnancy Raises Legal Questions Video Watch CNN's Sunny Hostin on what the law says »

Spears, the star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101," told OK! Magazine that she's pregnant and that the father is her 18-year-old boyfriend.

There has been no public talk of criminal prosecution in the case. Consensual sex between the two may well have been legal, depending on where and when it took place.

But critics of the nation's statutory rape laws say that laws that are ignored in some cases can be used to put other teens in prison and land them on sex-offender registries. 

Friday, December 21, 2007 9:25:33 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |  Related posts:
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