A DROP OF WINE, A LACK OF SENSE -- AND HOW

WASHlNGTON---If, perchance, some magazine is thinking of doing an article
on an "All-American" school district, I nominate Cherry Creek Colorado.

In the first place, the name alone is hard to beat and, second, the
suburban Denver district is where a school principal was demoted for
letting a group of young teenagers taste wine during a class trip to Paris.
The district has a "zero tolerance" policy.

It also has a zero common sense policy. This it shares with many other
American communities and school districts that think, for some odd reason,
that the way to deal with the issue of youngsters and alcohol is not to
deal with it at all.

Of course, the Cherry Creek kids are too young to drink on their own---and
they may be depending on what their parents think, too young to drink at
all. But they are not too young to learn about drinking and about how wine,
for instance, is not something you guzzle in the back of a car but a
libation that complements a meal.

And a meal is where the 13 kids from Cherry Creek had their sip of wine. On
their last night in Paris, they were having a three-hour meal --- escargots
and duck among other things---and were allowed a thimbleful of wine. When
they got home, the group's chaperon --- principal Shawn Colleary---was
busted, demoted to teach in another school.

What happened next is a testament to the power of political correctness.
Mr. Colleary repented. He acknowledged guilt ("poor judgment") and praised
the school superintendent, Robert Tschirki. The superintendent ultimately
changed his mind and reinstated the principal.

Earlier, though, Mr. Tschirki had stood his ground before a group of
parents who thought he had acted arbitrarily. "The laws of that country
mean nothing to me, " Mr. Tschirki said of France.

But Mr. Colleary was right in the firstplace. If the idea of the trip to
France was to broaden the kids' education, it was perfectly
appropriate---even beneficial---for them to learn how to drink wine.

It is true that they could not, and should not, do so on their own. But in
a little while there is no reason why they could not join their parents by
having a sip of wine at dinner. This is how the French and Italians learn
to drink wine---and why, according to some social scientists, public
drunkenness in France and Italy is both rare and not tolerated.

America, though, is off on one of its periodic attempts to deal with a
problem by, in effect, banishing it. Zero tolerance sounds nice, but it
does little more than make alcohol taboo and, therefore, more attractive to
young people. It may account, since logic cannot, for the apparent upsurge
of binge drinking on American college campuses.

In fact, binge drinking is the antithesis of what the Cherry Creek students
were being taught in Paris: You do not guzzle wine, you savor it. The idea
is not to get sick dmnk it is to have an enjoyable and sensuous
experience---and to be able to remember it the next morning.

The zero tolerance approach is suffused with moralism at the expense of
common sense. It is similar to programs that teach kids sexual abstinence
and---if social conservatives have anything to do with it---nothing else.
This approach has not worked since, approximately, the Neanderthal era.

Some social scientists think we Americans are going through a
neo-Prohibition era. Maybe. But the Cherry Creek principal won
reinstatement because the community thought he had been unfairly treated.
Likewise, to the chagrin of social conservatives the nation as a whole
seems largely untroubled by Bill Clinton's alleged affairs. Most Americans
seem to have zero tolerance for zero tolerance.

But the issues here are not ideological --- they are eminently practical:
What is best for children? Always, the answer is education, knowledge, an
appreciation-of both the pleasures of a substance (or an act) and its risks
and, of course, the admirable virtue of moderation. Cherry Creek's
youngsters, though, were instructed in arbitrariness, absolutism and the
supposed virtues of ignorance.

I bet they can't wait to finish the bottle.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)