Family planning and the schools: A look at the planned parenthood mailbag

Abstract

A decade ago mail to Planned Parenthood consisted mainly of letters begging for birth control help. Today letters come from all levels of American school life concerning the subject of family planning in schools. Brought into the classroom are topics such as population dynamics the relationship of family size to poverty and other social problems and the question of how individual life plans and family planning relate to each other. Population growth concerns and study associated with ecology and environment are of the greatest interest to letter writers. American education is responding to need and ingesting new matter in a familiar tradition as new attitudes toward family size and planning are being reflected in lesson plans. A more central initiative at upper leadership levels is needed. The number of live births among 12-14-year olds has been rising (12000 in 1971) and in other age groups the younger the women the smaller the decline in number of births. The school has an important role in helping to cope with this problem. One means would be to institute special study projects in some major centers of teacher training to identify cognitive and affective goals in family planning and population study. Supervised practice teaching in this field should be introduced. These projects could produce experienced teacher cadres and could yield curriculum guides.