Tonight's TV
Early learning
Teen Mum High (BBC2 9pm); The Dinosaur Mummy (C4, 9pm)
AS the girls at Moat House
school are having sex education
lessons, that phrase
about shutting the stable
door after the horse has bolted
springs into my head.
For this establishment in Stockport,
Greater Manchester, is a place where all
the pupils are teenage mums.
One girl, who became pregnant at 12,
says she "didn't know much about how
it happened" so perhaps the lessons will
be valuable in stopping her, and the others,
getting pregnant again.
Others don't blame ignorance but split
condoms. A few may even have got pregnant
on purpose, following in the footsteps
of their teen mums, or to escape an
unhappy childhood.
Whatever the reason, Moat House is
dedicated to ensuring they don't lose out
on an education because they have a
baby. Several girls who were persistent
truants before falling pregnant are now
model pupils at a school which teaches
English literature as well as how to bath
a baby.
The girls are aged between 13 and 16.
As the film opens, six of the girls are new
mothers, five are expecting including
the youngest pupil, 13-year-old
Kayleigh.
Until recently, her family were homeless
and living in a hostel. Now they
have a house, she wants to have her baby
at home in a water birth.
Becky, 14, doesn't believe in abortion.
"I wasn't going to unmake a mistake for
everyone else," she says. It emerges her
mother was a teen mum, who walked out
on the family when Becky was 18
months. She wants "to prove to my mum
I could be a better mum".
The fathers are rarely mentioned or
seen. Becky's 16-year-old boyfriend,
we're told, "is not happy" at her keeping
the baby. He hides his face in his
hoodie from the cameras.
Teen Mum High does help us understand
young mothers - or, at least, this
group - better. They're keen to dispell
the notion that just because they're
young mothers they are, to quote one of
them, slags who sleep around.
The Dinosaur Mummy is no teenager
- it's 67
million
y e a r s
o l d .
Unlike all-toofamiliar
teen
mothers, "this is
something you've
never seen before, the
flesh and scales of a dinosaur",
says the excitable
commentator.
BABY LOVE: Teenage mum Kim learns biology and bottle feeding at Moat House school
I can't say seeing that was on my list
of things to do but the enthusiasm of
those making the discovery and examining
the find is enough for everybody.
The story begins in the arid badlands
of North Dakota where 16-year-old
Tyler Larson is prospecting for fossils
on his uncle's land. He finds a bit of dinosaur
but, for reasons never explained,
the excavation doesn't begin until 2004.
Paeleontologist Dr Phil Manning is
under no illusion that the find is big -
in terms of both size and significance.
This is a dinosaur mummy with skin,
tendons and organs preserved. This will
enable scientists to work out how dinosaurs
moved and how fast they went.
The mummy is a 12-metre duck-billed
hadrosaur. But what's that claw mark
embedded in the mummy? Turns out it's
a crocodile locked in a dying embrace
with the hadrosaur. The mummy could
provide scientists with dinosaur DNA -
they are frustratingly close to finding it.
"Never give up when you're looking
for something as elusive as a protein
molecule in a dinosaur that's 65 million
years old," says Manning.
10:55am Monday 12th May 2008
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