Letter to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick

July 25, 2007

Office of Mayor Kilpatrick:
City of Detroit
Executive Office
Coleman A. Young Municipal Center
2 Woodward Ave., St. 1126
Detroit, MI 48826

Dear Mr. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick,

I am writing you this letter out of my concern for teens and education. There are many teenagers dropping out of high school for reasons that are nonsense, and I am afraid that the ratings will increase in the future. We need to recognize this problem before it takes over and destroys future plans for these teens. I hope my letter will catch your attention and motivate you to help the issue to come to an end.

In the past month I have been doing research, and most teens leave school because there is not a steady father figure in the home. I think that you should sponsor a Father Fun Day. This will help show that these teens need their father in their lives. This will allow fathers and children to have a special relationship based on education. This will give the fathers a chance to see how their kids see their futures. This Father Fun Day should get the fathers in the lives of their children, and keep them in school.

You are a father, so really think about this. You wouldn’t want your children to dropout, so how would you fix this situation? Think as if these teens are your kids, and tell them that leaving school is not the solution to problems in life.

HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS

High school dropouts has become a major problem in today’s teen youth. The article “Predicting school dropout and adolescent sexual behavior in offspring of depressed and nondepressed mothers” is an experiment that tried to find reasons why most teens dropout of school. Most of the research was done on pregnancy, mental or health issues, learning disabilities, sexual intercourse, poverty, and a non steady male figure in your life. According to Ellis, “some researchers have suggested that nonre-lated men in the home affect the timing of puberty in girls, which then can affect their likelihood of earlier sexual behavior”.

Parents also tend to let their teens have way too much partying, hanging out with friends, and that makes the teen seem he/she can make their own decisions of being in school and keeping good grades. Research has shown “Intelligence has been linked directly to school dropout (Bohon), but also may serve as a protective factor among children exposed to the stress of living with a depressed mother, particularly one whose depression is chronic and severe. Among children exposed to stressors such as chronic poverty, prenatal complications, and dysfunctional family environments, those with higher IQs show fewer disruptive disorders and better school achievement than do those with lower IQ” (Bohon). This means that students with unstable homes or who are living a non wealthy life tend to feel stress and run away from school. Students using alcohol tends to let the alcohol take over and become them. A study was conducted when three different age groups were tested for the differences in their academic performance in drinking alcohol. The first group did not have any sign of alcohol, the second group drank alcohol a few times and stopped, and the last grouped used alcohol heavily (Bohon).

The study of sexual behavior was very high in the different age groups. In the research most teens have sexual contact with a significant other because of no father-figure in the home. 184 participants were tested for when, and why they started sexual intercourse and these were the results:

“Of the 56 individuals not included in these analyses, 40 were missing IQ scores. Sexual intercourse by age 18 was reported by 13 (29%) of the 45 offspring of never-depressed mothers, 56 (55%) adolescents of the 101 moderately depressed mothers, and 18 (47%) of the 38 offspring of chronic/severely depressed mothers. The mean age at which adolescents first had intercourse was 15.34 years (SD 1.92), with a range of 12 to 18 years. Two outliers (sexual intercourse at ages 6 and 9) were excluded from the analyses. Early sexual behavior (i.e., by age 16) was reported by 10 (22%) of the 45 offspring of never-depressed mothers, 40 (40%) of the 101 adolescents of moderately depressed mothers, and 14 (37%) adolescents of the 38 chronically/severely depressed mothers.”

My research has shown that you don’t have to just leave school because you think it’s not cut out for you, but because there are obstacles that cause you to leave and make bad choices.

Bohon, Cara, Judy Garber, and Jason L. Horowitz. "Predicting school dropout and adolescent sexual behavior in offspring of depressed and nondepressed mothers." Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 46.1 (Jan 2007): 15(10). InfoTrac OneFile. Thomson Gale. University of Detroit Mercy. 20 July 2007 .