| |
|
why has no one done this before?
Simple. To trivalise my answer: Daily Mail readers.
What do I mean? Well, basically, however liberal you are, you will always be too liberal for some people. And what you're dealing with here is very dangerous ground - the big stuff you've mentioned you're interested in, sexuality (rather than sex) and drugs education.
Schools are part of the government-controlled part of society. (Independent schools aren't, but they do follow similar guidelines, and the same syllabi, etc). The government has made some things illegal. And the phrasing of some of what you're suggesting is almost impossible. Are you advocating that drugs are bad? Probably, you're a school but you know some kids are going to go off and do them. It's not enough to say: "Right. Ecstacy is illegal, OK? Good. But if you are going to take it..." because "illegal" is not actually a strong enough word. Most kids have drunk underage, many smoke underage, not to mention sex pre-16 or buying National Lottery tickets or any other infractions of the law. Illegal is an incentive to many kids. But I think you'd find the concept of saying "Drugs are bad for you, but if you ARE going to do them..." tough because, well, you don't necessarily think they're bad.
And there's the parental angle. A protection thing. We're bright young things at the moment, we can cope with truth, etc, etc, but the parental viewpoint changes things. And sometimes, you know, even open-minded parents want to do these things for themselves, when THEY think they're children need to know. OK, so many parents know jack shit about ecstacy and other controlled substances, and people who do know might be of some use. But if you tell the truth about something, there will be parents who will write to the Daily Mail, and the headlines will say: "CHILDREN TAUGHT HOW TO SHOOT UP!!!"
And that's the thing. The world isn't full of people like you, or Barbelites. The world out there, the 56 or however many million people in the British Isles... on average, aren't as clever as you. Sorry. But you've got to take that into account.
You want to protect kids by making them aware that they are responsible for their own lives and explicitly giving them the information they need to be able to take care of themselves and others around them.
This, in a nutshell, IS a great idea. It is also about 1% workable. Kids don't just get given information; they get a whole lot more besides; emphasis, slant, encouargement the teacher didn't know about themselves. And believe me, the whole "we were taught about it so it must be ok" thing WILL come up, no matter how much you teach them that these things are BAD. Come on... how many anti-smoking classes at school worked? Even the one where your teachers wheels out the jar with the smoker's preserved, tarrified lung in? Clearly not many.
I'm not sure your methods of implentation are entirely successful, harmony. They're not so much Part 1 and 2 as about Part 5 and 6; there's so much more to come before them, and even when you get to your ideas there are so many vital details to be fleshed out - and the details will keep piling up, and we have to be accurate about them. And finanical reward isn't necessary. Viability, perhaps, and they obviously don't want to make a loss... but you're not going to make a profit on telling kids that drugs are bad, mmkay, but they're worse if you're ill-informed? And unlike the cigarette industry, which is legal, and we can get relatively accurate figures relatively easily for its profits and expenditures... the drugs industry isn't legal, there are masses of transactions that go on without record, and arresting and imprisoning people isn't the same as showing usage going down. It's far more difficult to quantitatively analyse Britain's drugs industry; Customs and Excise tell us how much they've got, and estimate (iirc) how much has been shipped in... but it's all behind closed doors. Do you want an official government watchdog for it or something?
Drugs are a hot topic at the moment, you know, decriminilisation of this, changing of category - the recent shifting around of Cannabis' status only serving to confuse the public... one mention of "change in status" and they're off, sod the small print... so I don't know how well this would go down with local or national politics.
I think what you really need to do is work out precisely what you want to do, and how much you're prepared to compromise. Because you're going to have to. Single-handedly, and coming from the position you are, you're going to be lucky to get anywhere. And you are going to get into serious wranglings about what people can and can't say, and what's information and what's promotion. And one teacher's information is another parent's promotion. And believe me, you can't just get into a school and start teaching this off your own bat, no approval, before it gets found out. You need all the support you can get. So you're going to have to start very slowly. To be honest, this is not five years' work, or ten; it's a lifetime's. What you've described is the endpoint. You've now got to work out ALL the intermediate steps, and there are a lot.
It's a great idea in practice. I agree entirely. Practicality? Not great; teachers really are overworked and underpaid enough as it is, and being retrained in something many will have already studied won't go down well. And then there's government policy - remember section 28 and promoting homosexuality in schools, etc? - and local policy, and the experience you will need, and twenty billion tons of luck...
It's just too much. You're bang on, great ideas, but they just aren't workable in Britain the way it is. And we can all say "but it should be" and slam this shitty government and all the others, good or bad, before them (though in general, "The Government" are always bad in the public eye), and say what we'd do if we ruled the world... but it's never that simple.
(phew. hope that makes some sense, folks. and i didn't really touch on the sexuality issue; i'm sure we'll get around to that later). |
|
|
