PROGRAM AIMING HIGH

The Trouble With Trying To Teach Kids Stuff Is That The People In Charge
Aren't Kids.

Take Education Minister Christy Clark's well-meaning foray into drug and
alcohol awareness education, for example.

It's such a laudable endeavour that our telepoll last week got results
overwhelmingly in favour of making the Minister's proposed new program a
prerequisite for graduation.

But the kids most likely to pass the course will probably be the ones who
are most heavily into drugs and alcohol. They've got all that stuff down
cold, even without studying.

They'll get great marks in the course, because cramming for the exams is
their favourite recreational activity.

They already know all the risks of drug and alcohol abuse, because they've
been watching their friends.

But will it deter them?

Nah! Every teenager knows (as do most adults) it only happens to the other guy.

It's always the other guy who is incapable of handling the hard stuff. Me?
I can quit anytime I want to!

Meanwhile, the kids who are most likely to graduate with the best marks are
the ones who are less familiar with the drug and alcohol culture. They are
the ones least likely to be at risk, and yet they are the ones who are
going to struggle with the course.

And they'll be adding another required subject to their course load, at the
expense of an elective that they'd rather take.

It's enough to drive one to drink!

Clark's idea has merit, provided it is aimed not so much at educating "at"
the kids as bringing it home to them.

That's hard to do, especially since the course will ultimately be developed
by a bunch of sequestered bureaucrats, and then will have to be approved by
their old-fogey bosses who forgot what it was like to be a teenager before
they were fully out of their teens themselves. Of course, the politicians
will have to give it their okay, keeping in mind that they don't want to
offend some of their more vociferously holier-than-thou constituents.

And then the watered down, luke-warm course will be interpreted by each
individual teacher in each individual classroom throughout the province.

And that's when the fur will really begin to fly. Some kid's parent will
catch him smoking a joint and will decide that his previously perfect
offspring couldn't possibly have been turned on to the substance without
having been introduced to it through the school's drug and alcohol
awareness program.

Remember when "sex education" was first introduced.

The parent will eloquently state his case that his kid didn't get drunk
despite Clark's course, but because of it.

The media will lap it up.

And the kids will continue to feel misunderstood. Because they are.