So I saw about another 50 of these ubiquitous “Proud Parents of a DARE Graduate” bumper stickers during a half-hour drive today. Let me get this straight - you’re proud that your children have graduated from a program that’s been proven ineffective in seven different studies? (The only one that “proved” it worked was [surprise, surprise] sponsered by DARE.)
I was unfortunate enough to be a DARE student when the program was in its infancy. They went on and on about how drugs were our choice, so we should choose not to do them. Then, at the end of the program, they lined us up (5th graders, mind you) and forced us to sign a paper promising to never, ever do drugs. Fucking idiots…
It’s not that I want to see a bunch of kids get hooked on dope. Minors have no business doing drugs. What I do have a problem with is somebody getting up in front of a class full of kids and telling them that pot is as dangerous as heroin or cocaine. What happens when the kid sees his friends try pot and not become hopeless addicts? He then thinks that the teachers must have been lying about coke too. Hell, after the first few times I smoked pot in high school, I was ready and willing to snort a line. I had a fucking coke buy all lined up. Luckily it didn’t come through. By the time I had another opportunity to try it, I knew the danger was all too real. To this day, I’ve never put any of that shit up my nose.
Another problem I have with DARE is that it’s not taught by professionals. There are people out there who have years of drug education. The cops that teach DARE have - get this - two weeks of instruction on the subject! How can you expect these people to accurately answer your childrens’ questions? They can’t. So they lie. They make shit up. They pass off conjecture and urban legends as facts.
One of those bumper stickers I saw today was on a pickup truck with FEAR THIS written in large letters on the back window. Fear the proud parent of a DARE student? Now that’s funny.
To fot in with the motif of the vehicle and make your point, you should’ve placed a “Calvin Peeing” sticker right above the DARE one.
Just another case of “Feel good” programs designed to make the people who started it feel good with no real concern for reality. Some idjit decides that in order to feel better about all the drugs they did they’ll redeem themselves by starting a program dumping the responsibility for their bad adolescent behavior on parents. What does DARE stand for anyway…Drugs Are Really Eegnorant? You’d think so the way these losers parade ignorance to the facts. Hell, my state (Pa) even has a license plate with DARE on it.
My eight year old son knows that drugs are bad. I told him, not some public service announcement. I also told him that they do make you feel good, they don’t kill you or make you sick the first time you use them. They make you want more, so you can return to that good feeling they cause. I told him that once you start it’s hard to stop. He figured out on his own that my mother-in-law was killed by her addiction to cigarettes (When he was five) because they made her feel good and she couldn’t stop.
Am I idjit enough to think that peer pressure and other environmental issues won’t get to him and have him try it anyway? Not hardly. But I’m trying to treat the subject with love and truth and I don’t see how a cop with scare stories can compete with that.
While we’re on the subject of feel-good bumper stickers, I don’t care if your kid is an honor student. Tell me your kid isn’t going to grow up to be an asshole. That’s news I want to hear.
A group of citizens in a school district near where I live is trying to get the book “Boy’s Life” by Frank McCammon removed from the high school English reading list.
While teachers and virtually every student who’s read the book defend it as a wonderful coming-of-age tale (many of the students passionately described it as the best book they’d ever read and something that had a profound impact on them), the book-banning crowd points to about 15 lines that contain profanity and some examples of racism.
They don’t particularly care that the aspects of racism in the book are meant to point it out as a bad thing, and they have run full-page ads in local newspapers, taking the few objectionable lines completely out of context. (You could do that with The Bible and make people want to ban it.)
The school’s curriculum committee has decided to make the book optional rather than a mandatory read, but that’s not good enough for these zealots - many of whom have no children in the school district, nor have they even read the damn book.
My point in this hijack is, the mentality is very similar to the DARE thing: people fear America’s youth are going down the moral shitter, they don’t know what to do about it, so they grab at cosmetic things that make them feel better, like they’re doing something. Don’t bother us with facts, such as that it doesn’t work.
but my son recently graduated from our small town’s DARE program. Luckily, I have a son who likes to discuss stuff with me, so I had the opportunity to see how this program was working on him. And I can see where it’s going to potentially fail him.
Right now he and his classmates have a healthy, if unrealistic, solidarity about staying away from drugs. It makes them feel good to know that they’re in it together. What happens then they get a few years older and some of them begin experimenting? That’s where I see the problem. So I’ve told my son that people who use drugs are not bad people because they use drugs. It’s never that simple.
I’m epileptic. I take drugs for it every day. He knows that even prescription drugs can be harmful if misused. He has a whole arsenal of information and he’s proud of to be a DARE graduate. What good is it going to do him when one of his friends offers him something? We talk about that a lot. He’s come to the conclusion that drug use can complicate a person’s life a lot of levels.
Yes, I’m glad he’s proud of his DARE education. It makes him feel like he has some control over his life. And that’s important to kids his age. Am I going to trust DARE to keep him out of trouble? No way.
Do I think that his having this information does more harm than good? Probably. And that’s why we’ll keep talking about it.
I’m irritated by the people who believe that any program like this is going to solve any problem by itself. Makes for some lazy parents.
struuter, fancy meeting you here…
I think your point is excellent: parents can’t rely on these programs to raise their children. But I see another problem.
My son comes home from school with interesting new information quite often. He is 10 years old, in fifth grade. But very often the topics he brings up are shocking. I sometimes think they put way too many things in front of young children, and I do not remember anything even close to this when I was his age. Drugs? What’s that? Dead school kids? Never! We only had to worry about who got picked first for teams during recess! A magical time is what it used to be. DARE only came up in “truth or dare”, and we played that in secret places around the school, places that kids would probably be scared to go to in some schools today. I think DARE’s very existance in the preschools is a terrible sign of the times. Kids should be kids forpetessake! Anyway, I digress.
The problem I see is that parents can sit back and think “the school fill fix it” or “the ____ program will fix it”. Not likely. If you don’t have good communication with your children, and the trust you need to lead them, it will be a tough road for both of you. I will be talking to my son about all these things, and trying to save him from any painful lessons…if that’s possible.
Sili
Ah yes, the intrinsically evil DARE program. People who try to educate kids about drugs are such idiots. Come to think of it, everybody in this nation but you is an idiot. I see kids every day that have gotten fucked up sometime between DARE and high school graduation. Well, shit, it must be DARE’s fault. It couldn’t be the fault of the parents. Heavens, no. It’s the man’s fault. The man and his dirty DARE, trying to teach your kids crazy things like saying no to drugs.
Listen, I went through the DARE program when I was in fifth grade, and most of it was just about dealing with peer pressure and saying “no.” Yeah, they do give the blanket statement that all drugs are bad, but you know what? THAT’S WHAT FIFTH GRADERS NEED TO HEAR. Try explaining to fifth graders that pot is alright, but other drugs are not (I know, I know, your kid’s a genius and he understands this). When kids are 10, you teach them that all drugs are bad, just like you teach them that we live in an absolute democracy (as opposed to a representative republic). And you teach them the Bohr model of the atom (instead of the electron cloud model). Why? Because it’s just EASIER. That’s what they understand. They can learn about the gray areas later.
Honestly, I fail to see how you guys consider the DARE program a problem. How can trying to teach kids to say “no” to drugs possibly be a bad thing? Now, DARE does not work if the support isn’t there at home. You can’t rely on DARE to teach your kids everything they need to know, but the good feeling they get from participating in DARE can be a positive reinforcer.
On a personal note, I always find it funny when neutron star attacks anyone’s credibility. I’d bet anything that the two weeks of special training that DARE officers go through is two weeks more than she’s ever had (not to mention the fact that they’re police officers, which in and of itself is training to teach the DARE program). She smoked a couple of bones and now all of the sudden she think’s she’s some kind of expert on the drug problem in this nation. She’s going to come back and say that I know nothing about drugs (she’s very predictable), because in another thread I admitted that I don’t know the biological reason for THC’s effect on glaucoma (and she, in all her wisdom, has yet to explain it to me). Yeah, star, everyone’s an idiot but you.
If I may speak for tradesilicon, may I? I think our point was that ANY program–no matter how good its intentions–is not enough. You say this also, Rousseau.
I can’t make a straight-across-the-board assessment of any program if I’m a parent with a child involved in it. Sorry. I’m way too interested in how it’s working for my child. Of course, if it doesn’t work for my kid…well, it’s not earning my confidence. I find this to be the case with gifted programs also. I have been sorely disappointed in them in regards to my oldest, but my second oldest thrives there.
Back on the subject…it’s not bad to teach kids to say “no” to drugs. But it is important to see potential problems with the blanket approach. It’s fine for now. Kids this age have a hard time with the grey areas of life. Keep it black and white. Yeah, I know. But I want to be prepared for the day that my son starts to see the grey. I don’t want him to look to me and find thatI’m too busy or expect him to figure it out on his own.
It pains me that I even have to worry about this. That HE even has an idea that it’s out there. Remember trick-or-treating after dark? With no parents going with you? My kids can’t believe that I ever did that. What a world…
And parents who are actively interested in their kids’ daily life see some pretty disturbing stuff. Yes, they come home with all kinds of stories…and that’s just what they feel comfortable telling us. When my son was in third grade he was required to bring a newspaper article to school every week for ‘Current Events.’ Bullshit, I said. I quit getting the paper precisely because I did NOT want him reading every child rape/incest/murder article plastered over it. The teacher–four months from retirement–did not understand that letting kids that age get their hands on a newspaper can be very disturbing for them. Am I too protective? Yep. Do I dismiss his stories or questions about hard topics? Nope. (Ask me sometime about the time he and I were in the Taco Bell drive-thru and he asks, “So, what is masterbation, exactly?” That’s a whole 'nother thread)
If I was expected to give the DARE program a condemnation, I won’t. It has its POTENTIAL problems. So far, it’s working for my son in his situation. But now it’s my turn to continue his education. If I fail to do that well I can’t blame DARE.
Oh for crying out loud Rousseau! This will be the third different thread that you’ve referred to me as a female in, and this will be the third fucking time I’ve corrected you and told you I’m a male! Kinda proves you don’t even read what I post. How can I expect a rational discussion from somebody lacking the mental faculties required to keep a person’s gender straight after being corrected twice?
I think fifth graders can understand that one drug is more dangerous than another. After all, they don’t go try to turn their parents in for drinking alcohol. I’m not making the claim that pot is harmless, nor have I ever made that claim. You love putting words into my mouth, though. A and B are both dangerous, but B is more dangerous than A. Pretty simply concept. I think you need to give fifth graders a little more credit than that, Rousseau.
The only problem with this is that it assumes that they are eventually taught the truth about drugs. They aren’t. They’re left to find it out on their own. Some find that out through books or the Internet on their own time. Most find it out through experimentation or by watching what happens to their friends when they experiment.
Back to the OP, this DARE program…
I was a stepparent for six years to two great boys. I was a bit shocked by what the dare program in their school was teaching them.
Stories told by the officer that came in to help with the class included kids and parents dying from drugs, and parents in jail, and other tales along that line. Mind you, I don’t have a problem with kids being informed, but this was a bit much for a 5th grader to relate to.
What really pissed me off was when the officer asked the kids if any of their parents had ever done this action, or have you seen them do this other thing. Like - have you ever seen any of your moms or dads smoke, oh really? what do they smoke? does it look like this or this? Do any of your parents drink? What kind, how much?
One kid’s father got quite busted in this sneaky method, and the kid was very upset to think that he (a 5th grader and classmate of my stepkid) helped get his daddy put in jail. An awful thing to do to a kid, I don’t care what the cop’s intentions were.
If you want to bust someone, go do your own investigation. Don’t get children to nark on their parents.
You’re kidding! How awful! Talk about a positive experience gone wrong. When I read your post, aenea, I called my son and gave him the third degree about his DARE education. He said that his class was never approached in that manner, but that the police officer did urge the kids whose parents drank to ask them to stop. I read your post to him and he was very angry that a police officer would abuse his contact with students in that way. I’m sure this will be the subject of conversation this evening.
He’s going to want to know how someone who is supposed to be helping others is capable of something like that. Maybe we’ll give the officer who conducted our DARE program a call and see what he has to say about it.
struuter, you sound like the kind of parent for whom DARE might be a helpful tool, in that you seem to maintain a continuing dialogue with your kid. Things brought up in DARE bring about further discussion on the homefront.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s happening all that much elsewhere. It sounds like the DARE program doesn’t even encourage family discussion. Like mom and dad are irrelevant to the equation - unless they’re using or dealing. Then tell me all about their activities, Junior.
It’s all black-and-white. There’s no need for family discussion, because I, Mr. DARE Officer, am telling you the way things are, and that’s that.
Do I think kids should use drugs? Not at all. Do I think kids should demonize adult drug-users? Not at all.
We have people serving longer prison sentences for selling bags of marijuana or a few hits of acid than for murder or rape. Our fucked-up drug policy is the direct result of officials over-simplifying the issue, or being flat-out dishonest about it. Now we want to indoctrinate our little kiddies with the same way of thinking?
For the Rousseaus of the world, repeat this to yourself, really slowly, until it begins to sink in.
** 1. DARE doesn’t work.**
2. Credible studies point out DARE is as effective as doing nothing at all in curbing kids’ later drug use.
3. Because of points 1 and 2 above, DARE is a big-time waste of money, and should be scrapped. More effective (and honest) alternatives for drug resistance education should be sought.
Questioning U.S. drug policy? The horror; the horror!
struuter, amen. You can speak for me any time, you hottie (still got that cat suit?)
That’s right, this is the pit. Rousseau - bite me!
The DARE program is not the cause of all that’s bad, it’s just a bad thing for parents to rely on, and based on some of what’s just been posted, it’s a bad thing for kids to be exposed to as well.
Sili
Well, you’ve all got me thinking. A very dangerous thing, that. I remember my parents telling my friends that any time they were anywhere they shouldn’t be and needed a no-questions-asked ride home or place to stay, any time they needed to hang out somewhere where they didn’t have to worry about being offered drugs or booze (my dad’s term)–they could call them. I’d forgotten about that somewhere along the line. And my parents lived up to it many times. There were always people at our house. Very cool.
Maybe…maybe I should start letting my son know that that same rule goes in our house. A safe haven, of sorts. I mean, all those proud little smiling faces at that DARE graduation…I feel somehow responsible for them. I’m not talking about saving the world…just maybe creating an option. Am I a fool? Too optimistic?
If the DARE program doesn’t work like some people here are saying…I’d better have a back-up plan.
Thanks for letting me ramble…
struuter
*Sili–YES! Cat suit in perfect working order. Thanks for asking.