In the light of our children's newly increasing drug abuse problems, suicides, and pessimistic view of their future, Bob Dole's message of, "Don't do it", will be obviously less successful than Nancy Reagan's advice of, "Just Say No". Every day the evening news tells us stories of how the Colombian Cartel is becoming rich on the devastated lives of American youth.
After spending millions of dollars to stop the never-ending supply of cocaine, and now heroin, from crossing our borders, why is the supply perpetually increasing? And now our leaders, in their obvious frustration, are blaming the schools, the churches, and even our families, for their own failure in trying to control the problem.
It is very naive to tell young people not to do drugs or to simply say no and expect to see any results. It is basically easy to set up curriculums to educate students about how drugs lead to a life of despair and failure. It is even easier to create new courses of instruction to help our young people feel good about themselves.
But as leaders and educators, we always stop there. When we tell our young people to say, "no", we cause a vacuum to form in their lives. As a teacher I know that when you create a vacuum in a child's life, something has to replace it. Nothing is more disastrous than having nothing in a child's life. When you take away a means of identity, as drugs have become, you have to replace it with something else. That's where we've falling short. It wasn't always that way.
Remember what school used to be like not so long ago? Sure, there were the traditional classes of mathematics, English, and science. The competition in class and in the hallways is the same as in the past. But, there is something missing. Something that was a basic part of the school society only a generation ago: after school activities.
No, I'm not talking about after school detention or some plot to a teenage murder movie. I am talking about the science club, math club, debate club, the Shakespearean Society, the computer club, the save the whale foundations, the various young democrat clubs, the young republican brotherhoods, and the many different future citizens of future career clubs whose pictures used to fill the pages of yearbooks gone by.
Even after school intramural sports, which used to saturate the various sport fields in late afternoons, have dried up to a few games of pic-up basketball with no adults or supervision in sight. I realize that organized competitive sports still exist. But if you consider the fact that only a small number of students participate in these activities, programs for the majority of our students are sadly lacking.
I am not writing to tear into the schools for their failure to keep our youth involved in creative forms of expression. I am writing about the failure by our society to realize that the drug abuse problem is not a simple problem that can be solved by a simplistic slogan.
A basic high school physics rules states that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you take a means of, "belonging", away from our youth, even though it could be as catastrophic as drug abuse, you damn well better have something to replace it with.
Instead of spending millions on this so-called war to sop the flow of drugs into our society, why couldn't our leaders put some tax dollars into rebuilding a structure to keep our youth occupied with something more constructive than destroying their own lives. The money could be used to finance after-school activities. An organized system of funding for after school activities could lead our youth into a greater sense of belonging and more control over their own futures. I am convinced that this type of expense would not near the expense our government spends trying to stop the unstoppable.
Ex-secretary of education, William Bennett, had his own slogan for stopping drugs in the schools. He advised teenagers to, "slam the door on drugs". But why couldn't he realize that if he would open the door to more recreational opportunities in our schools, our youth would not have the time for drugs. If you cut the demand for a substance, there will no longer be a need for a supply. Military and political actions against the suppliers will become as unnecessary then as they are unsuccessful now.
Jim Fabiano is a teacher and a free lance writer living in York Beach, Maine
Comments
writers@mcint.com
Last Updated: Sep 29, 1996