Look, I don’t think driving drunk is okay. Hell, I don’t think driving sleep deprived is okay, either. It’s not nice to the people you might run in to.
That said, what the Oceanside, CA School District decided was okay in trying to teach this lesson is completely unacceptable.
They thought having the California Highway Patrol come in and tell some high school students their friends were dead in a drunk driving accident, letting them freak out and then saying, “Nope, everything’s okay, it was just an object lesson!” was just fine and dandy if it saved a life.
Bull.
I’m all for teachable moments. But you have to use your brain. The lesson that was taught there was, “You can’t trust us to tell you the truth if we have an ulterior motive.”
Fair enough. Those kids can’t trust the cops or the school district to be honest if they have an ulterior motive.
Is that the example you want to set of how an adult should behave?
Is that the level of sensitivity you want them to show people they have power over in years to come? Don’t fool yourself that we’re talking all that many years, by the way. In five years, some of those kids will be teachers. I bet some of them are camp counselors, swimming instructors or lifeguards right now. You want them to get that Machiavellian with your children?
Even so, there are better ways to teach a kid not to drive drunk. How about… talk to your kids about alcohol? I’ve told my kids flat out the average rates at which a human processes a drink. They’ve watched adults in their lives decide not to drive a car because they’d just had a drink. They’ve heard them say things like, “Can someone else drive? I’ve just had a glass of wine.”
They’ve been told you can overdose on alcohol. I even told them the story of me drinking a certain quantity of alcohol on a bet and how a friend insisted I throw up when he found out what I’d done. I also explained that if he hadn’t done that, my son would never have been born, because I’d’ve died. Growing up Southern Baptist means your alcohol education is sketchy at best. At the time, all I had to go on were my parents quite moderate drinking habits on the one hand and the church and my school’s (considerably lighter) scare tactics on the other. I’d internalized that as long as you don’t get behind a wheel or make a stupid decision about condom use, alcohol really couldn’t be dangerous and the school was being its idiotic, dramatic self.
My children are getting a lot more facts. Parents, if you think your moderate drinking habits are a good example, don’t rely on that. The schools might be using scare tactics. The kids might blow off what they hear in school. You make sure your kids get the accurate facts.
Will they always follow through with intelligent choices? As badly as it scares me, probably not. But goddammit, they know they’re getting told the damn truth. They trust me to do that. If an activity is mildly risky, they know bloody well I’m not going to lie and blow the risk out of proportion because I don’t want them to get hurt.
I sincerely hope the parents in Oceanside raise holy hell about this and stop that sort of nonsense!
that’s screwed up. I doubt that even if people said anything about it, they’d do squat because school systems don’t like being told what to do.
In full support of your thesis, I remember hearing of a study (30+ years ago) showing the most and least likely to become alcholic based on the religion one is reared in. The most likely was Mormonism, the least likely was Orthodox Judaism. The Orthodox Jews start their kids out on watered down wine for ceremony at a very young age. The mormons don’t allow it ever.
I see teaching kids that all drugs are bad and will kill you the same way. So what happens when your kid tries pot and doesn’t drop dead on the spot? They figure you and the school are full of it and try crack or meth next…
Why is telling your kids the whole truth such a radical idea?
Melissa
Telling anyone someone they care for is dead is extremely cruel. That has no acceptable place in the education of children. You are correct. Trusting your educators – either as a child or as a parent of children- is vital.
Schools are propaganda machines. No news here. This is just an extreme example of same.