One of the things that has always puzzled me is that the United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the Western World.

According to Planned Parenthood, the teen pregnancy rate is twice as high as that in England, France and Canada, three times as high as in Sweden and a whopping seven times as high as that in the Netherlands.

So people in the U.S. have untamed libidos and have twice as much sex as Canadians and Europeans.

Yeah, right.

A lot of people are fond of saying this is due to lack of religion here in the U.S., but let’s be honest.

In the Netherlands, the birthplace of existentialism, euthanasia is legal, and a recent survey showed the Dutch feel less guilty than any other nation.

Still, they have only a seventh of the problem we do.

Movies are a common scapegoat for teaching teens the wrong sexual mores.

It seems that in Hollywood movies, people have sex because they get bored in elevators, or maybe a couple gets five minutes ahead of the bad guys and needs to give them a chance to catch up.

To test this theory I rented a few French movies.

There was even more of the horizontal tango in these films than there was in the Hollywood flicks.

I then tried to make some inferences about sexual behavior that we might be able to use here in the U.S.

For one thing, the people didn’t have sex just because they were good looking, but rather they seemed to aspire for some lofty intellectual purpose.

One particular film led me to believe that we should teach teens to be cryptic and aloof.

On the other hand, it could be that the movie had a total of five minutes of dialogue in two hours, and the rest was just a bunch of people walking around looking depressed.

Another film suggested the technique of feigning your own death to vengefully lure your ex-wife to Poland for sex reduces the likelihood of conception.

None of these ideas seemed very practical or scientific.

Besides, as George Carlin points out, the rest of the world is just as bananas about our movies as we are, but many countries don’t have anywhere near the problems we do.

Not to mention that “Baywatch” is the most-watched show in the world, and I’m pretty sure the reason for its appeal is universal and not the complex story lines.

Europeans are not nearly as adverse to spending money on public education and healthcare as we are.

There are definitely places in the U.S. where people do not have access to all of the information regarding sexual issues that they should.

However, at my high school, girls would disappear to the Alternative Learning Center despite the wealth of information we were provided with.

There are some simple solutions. Two-thirds of teens who became pregnant have a history of sexual abuse.

Thirty percent of fifteen-year-olds who become pregnant had the help of a strapping gentleman aged 21 or older.

I would think we have some cozy, little-barred rooms in our state institutions for some of these fellows. The prison system is already overburdened, you say, and it would be difficult to catch these men. Well, one survey I found showed that nine out of ten men in prison were the result of an unintended pregnancy, so we might as well get ahead of the game.

Still, this doesn’t account for a doubling, tripling or septupling factor, as these problems are not specific to the U.S.

So what is the answer? I for one think that we’re attacking the problem from the wrong angle here in the good old U.S.A. The problem is not in education, but rather in culture.

It has been a long time since our elementary school children have hid under their desks in air raid drills. So long ago that I have never done it.

It has also been nearly a quarter of a century since the last draft.

It seems Americans have forgotten what responsibilities accompany their great freedoms.

The disturbing sentiment amongst people my age is that we are free to do whatever we want.

This is true, but people are applying this to the God-given right to have a parking space, not wait in line and be treated like royalty in other countries.

Perhaps we all need a reminder that we are exempt from consequences and the Constitution does not apply to gametes.

Our own cultural-political arrogance is in my mind the deciding difference between us and the rest of the Western world.

We cannot nor should we teach morality in the public schools, but we can teach what it means to be citizens.

Maybe with a greater understanding of how our actions effect others and ourselves, we can kick a few social problems, and maybe even lose the whole “Great Satan” reputation we have in the world arena.

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Erik Hoversten is a senior in math and physics from Eagan, Minnesota.