Drug Education Cont...

SOLUTIONS commented on previous post...

You write: "by graphically showing to every teen how drugs affect health, emotions, and social life, we can drastically reduce the number of “social experimenters”"

You should be more specific about what graphically means, and give practicle advice.

I would suggest that our Yeshiva system should include the following in its corriculum:

1) Chemistry/Biology
learning about the makeup of the human body and how it functions will cause children to value and respect their bodies. I believe that there are less smokers and abusers amongst knowledgable people in this field.

2) ENGLISH Reading & Writing
there is a famous saying somewhere in the sea of Jewish literature which says something like "when you're in rome behave like a roman". i don't think it means that we should be gladiators or emulate romans in their barbaric behaviors. i understand this saying to mean that a person should not create a bubble around himself and completely ignore the culture and his sorounding. instead, one should "live with the times".

teach children how to read and write the ENGLISH language without any compromise.

...AND QUALIFIED TEACHERS!!!

this will give them a healthy self esteem, help them communicate better, and simply make them better citizens, a feeling of belonging.

I can go on about this for hours, using quotes and statistics to prove my point. however, it is a late/early hour and i must get some sleep.

I intentionally did not stress my opinion of what should be done because I want to hear what others have to say. And I appreciate your input. However I will have to disagree with you on this one, but don't let that stop you from commenting again.

When I wrote "graphically showing..." I had in mind, exactly as the words imply, a well thought out program that gives students, in graphic detail, a comprehensive knowledge of how drugs affect heath, emotions, and social life. (Statistics, images, videos, etc. of realistic examples, unlike the TV ads they have where some kid smokes up, causing him to shoot his friend.) Although I will admit that a knowledge of chemistry and biology will help in understanding how your body works, and why you need your brain, heart, liver, etc. It is definitely not a necessity. Look at cigarettes as an example, a smoker cannot take a cigarette without getting harassed on how unhealthy it is. This is a direct result of all the anti-smoking propaganda -- repeatedly showing images of black lungs, artificial voice boxes, limp cigarette ash, etc. And it is not from a comprehensive study of physiology, as is obvious from the widespread drug use in colleges worldwide. However if such studies and images do not exist for marijuana, then the only problem with it is that it is a "gateway drug." So I would have to agree with the "legalize marijuana" advocates. Because in that case the only reason why weed is the gateway drug, as opposed to alcohol or cigarettes, is because weed is illegal.

As far as "when you're in Rome" goes...
I don't think that you realize what the implications of your statements are. American culture is all about superficiality, enjoying the material, and quick fixes. The perfect setting for drugs and crime. On the other hand we have a rich and meaningful culture that has kept us alive as a nation for thousands of years. Although you may resent having grown up in it, our culture is the best thing that we have going for us. I believe that what we need is to further distance ourselves from our surrounding culture. In fact my opinion is that by parents trying to conform to society, they are partially responsible for the actions of their children. Because no matter how high parents set their standards, due to the inevitability of yeridos hadoros their children will always take it one step lower. Limudei chol should be limited to skills needed to communicate, and get a job. I assume that this (communicate and job) was your intention, but your comment was more than a Freudian slip.

I have too much to write based on my experience in the yeshivah system, so I will let your comment about qualified teachers go for now. However I will say that at most we disagree on what constitutes a qualified teacher.