She was very pretty but her face seemed "hard". It appeared that she had been through a lot of emotional trauma for a seventeen year old. Her personality hinted that she was a "party" girl. She was also my student for US history. It was the last period of the day at our high school. It was a very warm spring afternoon. And, my other students had just left the classroom. She suddenly posed the question, "Mr. Knepper, what do you think of artificial inception?"
My response was a suprised but quick answer. "I know what it is but not very much about it. So, I don't really have much of an opinion. Why do you ask?" She said, "Well, I want to have a baby but I don't want anything to do with a man."
I have repeated that story to my US history students for about ten years. The idea is to not merely present a moral issue of contemporary society, but to use US history, an academic subject, to teach students about the important results of different ways of thinking, which I specify as paradigms. Paradigms are simply ways of thinking we use to explain or predict. We all have them. They help us form first impressions of other people. We use them to shape our own behavior because we expect others to react to what we do in certain ways.
For the Christian teacher in a public school this concept of the paradigm offers ways of teaching in a Christian way of thinking without referring to scripture. It is important and it is also legal because, while the laws attempt to separate church from state, it is impossible to separate faith from state. This is necessarily true because everyone who teaches has some form of faith. It may be agnosticism, or Bhuddhism, or Islam, or Judaism, or Christianity. And these faiths all shape the way we look at our students, our society, and our way of teaching. We cannot help but express who we are and what we think as we teach in a classroom.
So, in my situation as a teacher of 11th graders, I can refer to the content of the textbook when it tells us that the "hippies" espoused "love", "peace" and "freedom". I can then say that today's society has accepted in large part the paradigm of the hippies that to them love means affection but not necessarily with commitment. It is common today, I tell them, that something like the following happens to a girl of 11, 12, or 13. She is going through changes in her body and emotions when a boy tells her that she is pretty. She is suddenly obsessing about boys. She wants to have a relationship with a boy. Before long, some boy propositions her to have sex. She will probably have inhibitions against having sex. She may be told by her girl friends, who have already had sex, that "It isn't that big a deal." Or, "Don't be a virgin." She may engage in sex with the boy so she can have a relationship with him. However, the boy soon goes away. The girl feels empty. She is hurt. But, she may again find herself in relationship with another boy and sex is now begining to be a regular event. She finds herself feeling more and more empty. Like the girl who was interested in artificial inception, she is deeply hurt and angry.
Then I tell the students that there was a society before the hippies came. It was not perfect. However, the paradigm that was common before went something like this. Love between a man and a woman will involve sex but since this is how children are created, and since the woman is the one primarily at risk, then the male must respect her enough to not ask her to have sex until they are in a commited marriage. I explain that the paradigm includes an understanding of the female's desire for being cherished and that sex is a natural aspect of this devotion. The man needs respect from the woman, but being unfaithful to the woman to pursue other women destroys his wife's respect for him. Thus, there is an exchange of commitments. They voluntarily choose to devote themselves to one another in order to be fulfilled not only physically but emotionally with each other.
I asked my students what "husband" means. They don't know. I explain that it means "caretaker". They are surprised. I ask them, "What is a husband-man?" They don't know. I explain that this is another word for "gardener". This helps to form a picture in their minds. The man is to plant, fertilize, cultivate, prune, and harvest, while always caring for the garden. This is the picture of what a man should be to his wife and his children.
So, if you look at the competing paradigms, the hippie paradigm of love is easy, gives pleasure to a certain level, but ends in emotional harm, and perhaps results in a pregnancy or STD's. The traditional paradigm of love, delays the sexual pleasure but provides a father for the children, a cherishing for the woman, and respect for the man.
I also repeat often the reminder to my students that my job is not to tell them what to think, but it is my job to get them to think. So, I am giving them these alternatives. What they choose is ultimately their own.
There is much more that could be said. I wish a different way of thinking could have been taught and accepted by the party girl who wanted a baby. Perhaps, younger teachers can provide such help for many others who are facing this part of life.
