BETTY ROLLIN: The baby's name is Heaven, and she's the guest of honor in Miss Q's second grade class at the Ellwood Elementary School in Philadelphia. Heaven and her parents make an appearance each month so the second graders can learn firsthand about babies and how they grow.
MARY JONES (Facilitator, Educating Communities for Parenting): In this particular class, we are learning how the baby develops physically, emotionally and cognitively and socially.
ROLLIN: Mary Jones has been a long-time facilitator in these classes. The classes are part of a national program in the public schools which teach children how to parent.
Ms. JONES: We teach them skills that are necessary for them to be kind, loving, caring, understanding, respectful people.ROLLIN: Skills, Miss Jones says, that are important to learn early. In addition, she says many of these children are already taking care of younger siblings.
Ms. JONES (speaking to second graders): What might I do to stop the baby from crying? Give her a pacifier. Feed her.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Change the diaper?
Ms. JONES: Yes, change the diaper.
Ms. JONES: Sometimes I will say to the children if the baby begins to cry I'm going over and I'm going to hit that baby. How many of you think that would be the proper thing to do? And they will say, "Oh no, no, no! Never, ever do that."
ROLLIN: In addition to teaching children how to nurture, studies show that these classes benefit them academically as well. Professor Dana McDermott is an expert and advocate for parenting education.
Professor DANA MCDERMOTT (DePaul University): It teaches critical thinking skills. It teaches noticing differences -- how is this infant different from the other infant? It teaches children inductive reasoning; it teaches them deductive reasoning. So it teaches about 17 cognitive skills that are going to help the child in terms of their academic success in school.NATALIE LEWIS (Teacher, Springfield High School, handing out infant simulators at Family and Consumer Science Parenting Class): Congratulations, Jennifer, it's a girl. I'm sorry, it's a boy!
ROLLIN: Parenting education at Springfield High School in Erdenheim, Pennsylvania, takes another approach. Natalie Lewis teaches her students not only about nurturing but also about the hard realities of being a parent, so one of the goals of the high school program is to get teenagers to postpone parenthood.
Ms. LEWIS: They have a doll that they can take home and it simulates a real baby. It cries. It needs caring for. It needs to be fed, needs to be comforted, needs to be burped. ROLLIN: And taking care means waking up five times in the middle of the night when the baby cries.
LEWIS: Most of the students after they've had the baby for the weekend come in and they say, "I don't want to see this baby again. This baby kept me up all night long. It's more than I thought it was."
ROLLIN: There is even a drug-addicted baby that doesn't stop crying.
Ms. LEWIS (to students): Try to calm it. Try, try, try.
ROLLIN: The students also learn how much babies cost.
Ms. LEWIS: We actually have a lesson where they have to go out and shop. They have a list of things that they have to go out and get prices for.
ROLLIN: Is this news for them?
Ms. LEWIS: Oh, it's shocking. It was shocking for me for the first time I heard. Even though I raised children, you don't think about the cost lumped in one sum. But when you look at it, it's pretty amazing, and the kids are shocked.
ROLLIN: They also learn that a baby can wreck their social life.
Ms. LEWIS (speaking to high school students): Would you baby sit for your friend's baby if she wanted to go out and you had an opportunity to go out as well? Would you baby sit? 
DEBBIE SMITH (speaking to young mothers at the Family Life Center Program): When you touch a baby with your hands, and you've been all out and about, you touch their hands, you are putting what on their hands?
don't see a goal that is readably attainable, you are more likely to make those choices that are going to be detrimental -- whether its substance abuse, whether its, you know, early pregnancy, whether its promiscuous behavior. 
ROLLIN: Advocates of parenting education point both to the success of these programs and the threat of their gradual demise. Because the No Child Left Behind Act encourages higher test scores in English and math, federal funds that have supported parenting education have been cut back. The Family Life Center has also had its federal support cut but hopes to survive with local funding. 
