# Drug Prevention Education in School **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 28, 2003, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034 "2003-10-28T15:32:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034/21 "2003-10-30T01:36:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrotherCadfael \* > \*\* > All of which may well be true, but can’t the same be said of a lot of stuff going on in the public schools? Where are the studies proving the efficacy of “diversity training”, “values education”, “whole language reading instruction”, “open classrooms”, “teachers as facilitators”, etc. > \*\* Start a thread about these isssues. I guarantee that someone’ll show up and say that these things’re a waste of money as well. Write your Congressmen and ask’em where the studies are. The study that I cited was commisioned by the GAO. ---
**Author:** ![Daikona](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8baadc/32.png) [@Daikona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daikona)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034/22 "2003-10-30T02:54:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jimbino \* > \*\*Parents who allow their kids to go to public school get what they deserve, I suppose. If you don’t want to practice child abuse, wait until you can home-school or afford private schooling before you have kids. \*\* That may be the single most absurd statement I’ve ever read on this board. Unless you have some actual substance to your allegation that public schooling is **abusive** , you might consider not insulting the majority of parents and declaring the majority of people unworthy of reproducing all in one breath. ---
**Author:** ![jimbino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9bcb4/32.png) [@jimbino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbino)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034/23 "2003-10-30T03:35:56Z")
1. Read Paul Goodman’s “Growing Up Absurd.” 2. Consider that it is the home-schooled who are winning the nation’s spelling, geography, physics and math bees. Have you ever participated in such a contest? 3. Consider that it costs over $12,000 to mis-educate a kid in a 9-month period in Washington D.C., and almost that in the other states. Think what we could do to 'em if we spent $16,000 and had 'em for another three months! 4. You will wake up when you realize that all the high-tech jobs have left Amerika and gone to India, where the young folks can at least speak good English! 5. Trying to enlighten a product of the public school system on the evils of the public school system is an exercise in futility. 6. Kids will grow up OK in spite of their parents and the public schools, so I don’t worry a whole lot, except that the gummint steals thousands of dollars from me every year to finance the attempted perversion of the nation’s youth. 7. There are loads of libertarians and fundamentalists who agree with this thesis. We may get to see the results of a real experiment once the Free State Project ([www.freestateproject.com](http://www.freestateproject.com)) gets off the ground in NH. One of the first things we will do is toss out public “education” and all its tax consequences! ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2003, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034/24 "2003-10-30T17:39:35Z")
Man, I just wrote a hugely long refutation of **jimbino** ’s argument point by point. But it got eaten! Argh! I’m not going to rewrite the whole thing, but I’ll just add one thing. His post was about the least convincing argument I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve encountered a lot of bad ones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drug-prevention-education-in-school/210034.md?page=1)