WHAT I LEARNED IN HIGH SCHOOL

The high school I graduated from in 1987 had fewer than 500 students. Since
this was Ontario in the mid-1980s, that means we went all the way to Grade 13.

It's wasn't a huge school population and we were in the middle of a
southwestern Ontario town that 17 years ago had a population of only about
10,000 souls.

By 2004 standards, my classmates and I could be fairly described as naive
in the realm of designer drugs.

That is to say the main choice for mind alteration at Annandale High School
in the late '80s was what you would expect: alcohol. Sure, there were some
dope-smokers in our midst, but they were rare and were typically on the
social fringes.

In the carefree and innocent days of 1984-87, the jock was still king and
weekend inebriation was an acceptable form of entertainment. Whether or not
I was a part of such rituals is a fact that was never confirmed or denied
for my parents. And 17 years later I see no reason to start confessing my
past sins.

However, I've learned a few things since obtaining by Ontario Secondary
School Graduation Diploma.

First on that list is that the social skills I learned in high school do
not serve you anywhere outside of those halls. Second is that the rules
imposed on students during their four or so years of secondary education
are directly relatable to the times in which they live.

For instance, in 1987 Tillsonburg, any time you may have seen a dog roaming
the halls, it usually meant that someone had propped a side door open to
relieve the overwhelming Ontario humidity and a local stray had wandered in
looking for a shady place to sleep.

Soon in Abbotsford, instead of being an interloper, that dog is more likely
to be law enforcement and he's there to check your locker for crystal meth.

I don't understand what's wrong with kids these days that they need new and
faster ways to fry their brains. It has gone from dope to ecstasy to
crystal meth to heroin. Nothing is good enough for these kids.

In my day, a sixer of Labatt Blue was enough entertainment when school let
out for a Thursday afternoon basketball game. A few hours later, you puke
behind the gym and you go home.

Today, kids are dealing with hard-core addiction, rehab, relapse, jail,
prostitution, violent crime, rehab, relapse ...

The dogs roaming the halls are just one way the Abbotsford school district
is considering as a means of dealing with an ever-growing problem among
high school students.

"We have a serious problem in our society and we've got to deal with the is
issue. We can't pretend it doesn't exist," says school board chairman John
Smith.

He's right, too. We can't pretend any more that the worst our kids are
doing is chugging a few beers during half-time of a basketball game.

But it's still frustrating to see our schools making the same mistake
nations like Canada and the U.S. have been making for the last three decades.

Drug-sniffing dogs, locker searches and cops will surely lead to a few
suspensions and maybe expulsions and criminal charges.

But it's unlikely it will ever deal with the question of why these kids are
turning tricks to buy their next high.

I'm sure it will come to them in prison.