COPS IN CLASS

Soon, I'm told, Boulder police will take the plunge and stop teaching fifth
graders about drugs. If they do, let's hope Boulder's a true example for
the rest of the country, as our leaders so often profess us to be. And
let's hope that finally, cops will be cops again and take themselves from
our elementary schools.

"We're seriously looking at removing the drug curriculum from schools
entirely," says Sergeant Terence Harmon, who heads Boulder's five-member
Community Services Unit. "By next September it will likely be gone." As a
result, Boulder public schools will crank out fewer drug addicts. Drug
education in the schools is a proven failure. At best it achieves no good.
At worst, say the critics, it leads kids to drug abuse.

This fall, students at Boulder schools began a new drug curriculum designed
locally by the Community Services Unit. Harmon says officers in the unit
consulted with leading experts in education and drug counseling. The drug
curriculum is part of a new program called Cops in the Classroom. Police
show up for up to nine days at each fifth grade class and talk to students
about subjects such as peer pressure, conflict resolution, laws and crimes
and drug abuse.

Police Chief Mark Beckner took a huge step away from the naive notion that
elementary school students should be taught about drugs when he dumped the
DARE program in 1998. DARE(Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is still all
the rage in most school districts throughout the United States. More than
35 million fifth graders today are subjected to DARE propaganda.

"Basically, we have found again and again that drug education in schools
causes kids to take on drugs and alcohol sooner than they would without the
education," says Richard H. Blum at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Blum would know. He headed the single largest study of drug education in
the United States, published as "Drug Education: Results and
Recommendations." Here at the University of Colorado, Dr. Delbert Elliott
has told Boulder Police they have little chance of establishing a
successful drug intervention program in schools. Elliott heads the
university's Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.

"Dr. Elliott says for every 1,000 feel-good programs out there, only 10
actually work," Sgt. Harmon says.

Under the DARE program, Boulder fifth graders were treated to a 17-week
course, in which police did nothing but talk about drugs and alcohol. By
contrast, Cops in the Classroom never wastes more than one hour on drugs
with any fifth grade class. If drug education were really necessary at all,
an hour would surely suffice. It's not that difficult to tell students
this: "If someone other than mom, dad or a doctor gives you a drug, it's
probably illegal. Should you choose to use it, at any point in your life,
we might find out and arrest you." It's really that simple.

"Basically, we spend that hour making students aware that they might be
confronted with illegal drugs, and tell them these drugs can have some
negative consequences on their minds and bodies," Harmon said. "We talk
about illegal drugs, because we are cops. DARE talked about all sorts of
drugs, and it talked about 'choice' a lot. Police are the worst people to
tell you about 'choice,' because in reality we aren't going to give you a
choice. Make the wrong choice and we arrest you."

Honesty? In the fifth grade? How refreshing.

Drug Soup

While Boulder police talk about illegal drugs, DARE children throughout the
metro area are still having their little brains washed with lectures about
heroin, LSD, cocaine, beer and marijuana. "Being addicted to heroin, or
getting AIDS from shooting up, is not the same thing as using marijuana,"
Harmon says. "DARE told kids about drinking and smoking as if it somehow
equated to cocaine and heroin. The program equates legal substances with
illegal substances. You learn about alcohol, tobacco, cocaine and heroin
all in the same course. So when a kid goes home and his parents are legally
consuming alcohol, or smoking cigarettes, what's the message? Or if he goes
to a church that serves wine for communion, what message does a child take
from that?"

The message would be this: "The officer showed me substances I might
someday have to make a choice about. My parents use some of these. The
priest served me wine on Sunday. So really, it isn't that bad after all. A
man I trust, with a badge, told me about these substances. He told me about
choice. He exaggerated the dangers, because that's his job. When confronted
with one of these substances, I'll choose to use. I associate LSD with
beer, marijuana and that nice man in a blue suit."

The fact is, fifth graders aren't old enough to learn about alcohol and
drugs. Most of the intellectual nuance of a drug lecture is lost on them.
What's left in the fifth-grade mind are images of LSD, heroin and cocaine,
associated with images of cops, wine and cigarettes. Thanks to DARE,
millions of fifth graders today equate hard core street drugs with daddy's
Marlboros and mommy's Chablis. By reducing drug education from 17 hours to
only one, Boulder police have done students and families a huge favor.
However, the same fundamental problem applies to that hour: fifth graders
shouldn't be learning about drugs, period. And the cops are figuring that out.

"In fifth grade, these kids haven't developed enough physically, socially
or psychologically to fully understand the message," Harmon says. "What's
hurting most fifth grade kids today anyway? Are more fifth grade kids
getting hurt by drugs, or by falling off bikes without helmets on? I think
bikes and helmets are a more realistic part of their world. So we should be
teaching them how to avoid getting hurt on a bike."

Trash Psychology

School districts that still allow DARE into classrooms, which includes most
of them, are simply misinformed. An alarming report in 1996, by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, showed a 78 percent rise in teen
drug use between 1992 and 1995. This was on the heels of DARE's most
prolific years. So I cracked some books and got on the phone to find out
what was up with DARE. Was it simply not working. Or was it, in fact,
backfiring? I called psychologist William Hansen, whose research formed the
basis for DARE. Hansen was a professor of psychology at the University of
Southern California when DARE was started in 1983 by then-Los Angeles
Police Chief Daryl Gates. Hansen said the LAPD took an anti-drug model he
had developed while it was in its infant stages and ran with it. More than
a decade later, Hansen observed, DARE was still using the exact same model,
even though he himself had scrapped it as one of many unsuccessful attempts
to develop a workable anti-drug program for schools.

"DARE was misguided as soon as they adopted our material, because we were
off base," Hansen told me.

Bill Colson, a world-renowned psychologist, developed the very theories
that formed the basis of Hansen's research. Colson worked with the late
Abraham Maslow and the late Carl Rogers, former president of the American
Psychological Association, to develop practices know as "experimental
education," "humanistic psychology," and "self-actualization." Those
practices, says Colson, formed the foundation of DARE and are at the root
of its curriculum today.

"DARE is rooted in trash psychology," Colson told me. "We developed the
theories that DARE was founded on, and we were wrong."

Even Abe Maslow wrote and spoke of his theories being wrong before he died.
Boulder psychotherapist Ellen Maslow, Abe Maslow's daughter, told me DARE
is "nonsense" based on a gross misinterpretation of her father's vision of
humanistic psychology.

Fixing it, or re-naming the program, won't help. Colson told me essentially
what Harmon has learned: thousands of school drug programs have been
invented, tinkered with, adjusted and re-adjusted, and almost none have
worked. No matter how the drugs are presented, it seems, kids only learn to
use them. "As they get a little older, they become very curious about these
drugs they've learned about from police officers," Colson said. "The kids
start thinking, 'I don't want to say no.' Then they say, 'Didn't that
police officer tell me it's my perfect right to choose?' And thus, they
choose to experiment."

Stop Wasting Time

Should we be surprised, really? Schools are for filling minds with
knowledge. What goes in comes out. We teach math so students will use math.
We teach reading so students will read. Yet we want to teach drugs, so
students will shun them. It doesn't make sense. Boulder police should be
commended for their light approach to drug education. Now let's encourage
them to go all the way and kill it completely. Drugs are a problem, for
sure. But it's not a dilemma our schools can solve.

When police finally take the drug class from schools, they should go
another step and remove themselves. Cops belong in classrooms no more than
drugs do. Our kids need to learn that police aren't always their friends.
Unless you're in trouble, or know someone who is, you should have precious
little contact with on duty officers of any kind.

Throughout history people have used drugs. This will continue. Let's not
wallow in it. Instead, let's give those children who want to learn the
basics(reading, writing and 'rithmetic) a better chance of doing so. We can
start by wasting less of their time with Cops in the Classroom.

Wayne Laugesen can be reached at Wayne@Laugesen.com or 303-499-4187. Send
letters to the editor to: Boulder Weekly Letters, 690 S. Lashley Lane,
Boulder, CO 80303; e-mail to letters@boulderweekly.com; fax 303-494-2585.