Posted on 06/14/2002 10:34:28 AM PDT by E Rocc
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:25:25 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Citing evidence that the Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education program is ineffective at altering youths
(Excerpt) Read more at toledoblade.com ...
One of the most dangerous things about DARE is the lies. They tell kids all these horror stories about marijuana and the kids figure out it's just not true, and assume what they were told about heroin and PCP must also be lies.That's the case with most "drug education" programs. Indeed, its one of the actual reasons marijuana can be a "gateway" drug: kids learn that what they heard about pot is bullmodell and they think that's also the case with the harder drugs.
To me the dangerous things about DARE are the way it encourages kids to hide the details of the program from their parents, and the condoning of anonymous snitching.
-Eric
What does anti-drug education have to do with the WOD?The War on Drugs depends on people trusting the government more than family and friends, and is greatly benefitted by snitching. DARE encourages these attitudes.
-Eric
BINGO
DARE is dopey. It insults the kids' intelligence, if they have any.A pre-Father's Day congrats on raising him well. >:)One of my kids didn't get a great grade in health. He maintains it was because of one multiple choice question on the DARE unit (unlikely). The question was "What does DARE stand for?" One of the answers was "Drugs are Really Excellent!"
He said, "Dad--I had to check that, it was too funny. I wasn't going to bend over and fish around for the PC answer they wanted."
-Eric
I can see where this aspect is a concern.
You are correct. I probably should have said One of the most dangerous things for the kids involved. Of course having their parents carted off to prison for burning a doob isn't going to do them much good, either. It's amazing how people change their tune about governement brainwashing in public schools when the subject is drugs.Since its a form of psychological treatment, federal law requires that schools obtain affirmative consent from parents before subjecting their children to DARE. Even national DARE recognizes that they are subject to this law. Many if not most districts ignore it.
-Eric
I can confirm that DARE is a waste of time. The vast majority of kids I tutor are habitual users of Marijuana on a near daily basis, and they have all been through the DARE program. Cocaine and meth are now becoming the rage among the Catholic school kids.
Drug use among the kids is getting so bad that they sometimes mock the LAPD officer who speaks to them at the DARE pep talks.
Thanks. He's a keeper.
DARE may be silly, but only because its comically inept and badly done. It does encourage the kids to rat out their parents. It would be evil if it were more effective.
Perhaps, but done in the home versus in the gov't schools.
This article reports the results of a five-year, longitudinal evaluations of the effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), a school-based primary drug prevention curriculum designed for introduction during the last year of elementary education. D.A.R.E. is the most widely disseminated school-based prevention curriculum in the United States.
Twenty-three elementary schools were randomly assigned to receive D.A.R.E. and eight were designated comparison schools. Students in the D.A.R.E. schools received 16 weeks of protocol-driven instruction and students in the comparison schools received a drug education unit as part of the health cirriculum. All students in the comparison schools received a drug education unit as part of the health curriculum. All students were pretested during the 6th grade prior to delivery of the programs, post-tested shortly after completion, and resurveyed each subsequent year through 10th grade. Three-stage mixed effects regression models were used to analyze these data.
No significant differences were observed between intervention and comparison schools with respect to cigarette, alcohol, or marijuana use during the 7th grade, approximately one year after completion of the program, or over the full five-year measurement interval. Significant intervention effects in the hypothesized direction were observed during the 7th grade for measures of students' general and specific attitudes toward drugs, the capability to resist peer pressure, and estimated level of drug use by peers. Over the full measurement interval, however, average trajectories of change for these outcomes were similar in the intervention and comparison conditions.
The findings of this five-year prospective study are largely consonant with the results obtained from prior short-term evaluations of the D.A.R.E. curriculum, which have reported limited effects of the program upon drug use, greater efficacy with respect to attitudes, social skills, and knowledge, but a general tendency for curriculum effects to decay over time. The results of this study underscore the need for more robust prevention programming targeted specifically at risk factors, the inclusion of booster sessions to sustain positive effects, and greater attention to interrelationships between developmental processes in adolescent substance use, individual level characteristics.
I'm not sure how I feel about DARE, but I hope it doesn't supplant parental responsibility to teach kids about drugs.
I'm not sure how I feel about DARE, but I hope it doesn't supplant parental responsibility to teach kids about drugs.Kids in DARE are encouraged not to take their DARE materials home. There's clearly a strong suggestion in the program that parents are not to be included.
-Eric
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