USD Magazine, Fall 1995

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"It's extremely insulting, to me, that you can't get $50,000 out of a $20 billion budget," Fellmeth says. "Parenting educa– tion is hanging in the balance and the irony is, it's hanging on a decision needed from someone who co-sponsored the bill."

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Proleding The Children The word "epidemic" is often used when speaking about teen pregnancy. Although they do not like the choice of words, Kalemkiarian and Fellmeth agree the teen birth rate of the 1990s is alarming and requires a fresh approach to stop kids from having kids. According to Fellmeth, the response so far has been: Take money away from the parents we are angry at and they won't continue to have children. The resulting problem is that hun– dreds of thousands of children are undernourished and not properly taken care of. We are moving in the direction of sacri– ficing the kids, he laments. "One thing that parenting education does is it says, 'Wait a second, let's talk about the group that is coming. Let's talk about their rights and needs,"' Fellmeth says. "How do we select what we teach? One of the criteria has got to be: Because people need to know it. They need to know it to live in society and be successful, to further the values we all have and to have healthy children for future generations. "There is no more important role you play than how you raise your children. Why isn't it a part of education?"

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In their 800-square-foot family room, Sue and Ken Hoyt push the couches to the wall and scatter throw pillows on the floor. The couple are preparing for 15 high school students to spend an evening in their Rancho San Diego home discussing morali– ty and moral decision-making. Sue, a nurse practitioner clinical placement coordinator at USD's Philip Y. Hahn School of Nursing, and Ken, an attor– ney, have volunteered to teach the six-week course to their parish's teen-agers for the past five years. St. Luke's parish in El Cajon, Calif., requires freshman and sophomore students to take the course prior to being confirmed in the Catholic Church. Much like Bob Fellmeth and Sharon Kalemkiarian from the Children's Advocacy Institute, the Hoyts believe education is the key to reducing the dangerously high teen pregnancy rate and the number of unwanted births recorded each year. Teaching from the Catholic perspective means a good portion of the course is explaining the church's beliefs on issues such as premarital sex, abortion and the sanctity of life, Sue says. "What we are finding is that most teen-agers are not firmly grounded in what their church's beliefs are," she adds . "Some can't even say what their family believes on these moral issues," Ken notes. "There is just not enough dialogue." The mission for Sue and Ken, who have been involved in teaching since their 20-year-old son first enrolled in their parish's religion classes as a youngster, is to start the process of critical thinking in the minds of the 14-, 15- and 16-year-old students. Discussions about whether the students think taking an illegal drug, cheating on an exam or engaging in premarital sex is immoral are designed to help the teenagers form a moral conscience. Sue and Ken are quick to emphasize that they do not demand acceptance of the ethical positions taught in the class. They simply ask the students to listen to the beliefs of the church and respect the fact that the positions have been formed over many, many years. "The kids we are teaching are from a sound-bite generation and don't understand the formation of a principle or idea over multigenerations," Ken says. "Ideally, the kids would be the ones coming up with the decision not to have sex, for example. They would be saying, 'If I really believe in the sanctity of life, if I really believe I owe it to myself and my friends to get the most out of my youth, then I'll wait."'

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