DRUGS: THE CHILDREN ARE CHOOSING

[Music] [Music] in developing these programs we heard again and again a desire for a dialogue for more communication between adults and children today you will see an experiment in starting such a dialogue we invited several san francisco bay area schools to send us children from the sixth and seventh grades these children were not picked on the basis of drug knowledge we invited representative teachers who were not specialists and who had not had training in drug education but were simply good teachers finally we invited consultants who had some expertise in this area all of these people spend a whole day together discussing drugs and related issues you will see excerpts from these discussions you will see people trying to listen and trying to understand each other the day began with the children talking with the teachers if a kid came up to you in this manner and said i have a friend who smokes marijuana wants me to join her or join him and happens to be a good friend of mine but she doesn't want me to tell anyone else should i or shouldn't i then there's the other youngster who says i have a friend who has asked me to come to a pot party where kids will be smoking pot i'm not interested in smoking pot but i'm curious to know what it's like when kids smoke pot by watching other kids smoking it what do you think mr karen should i go or shouldn't i go these are two problems i have faced me in the last three weeks and real problems how many of you kids have ever been approached by a friend uh about a drug that they might have and they've asked you would you be interested to see what it's like have any of you been approached by i have are you are you worried about saying yes or no um it seems funny but uh i would say no because i know you know it affects you you know and i know like this boy that approached me he uh he has been taking it a lot and uh i i just don't agree with it what do you say when he comes up to you like that do you have an argument for it no i don't have an argument but i try to tell him that it's not right you know and that he shouldn't take it lots of my friends um smoke marijuana and everything but well see they used to they were curious to know what it was like and they tried it but most of the friends that i know now they've stopped they did it maybe about three or four times but they didn't like it so they stopped and now you know they don't take any of that stuff because if we ever wanted it we could get it real easily because we know lots of people but all of us we just don't want it well when do they stop do they say they didn't like the taste or they just well like she said she said she was um sometimes people are ready for it well not only that some people don't need it you know they just don't want it but what if he forced to take it how could you be forced to take it honey like if my friend he got forced to take it how see somebody come up to him and asked him if he wanted to take some drugs and he said no just they started beating up on him until he wanted to he said yeah how old was he i don't know did you see this happen no he told me he had a booze on his face huh what would you do in any circumstance like that i don't know what happens in a normal fight on the school ground in situations where you're forced to do things do you you just let the situation pass that you pass it on to authorities never happened to me what did your friend do he let himself get beat up did he take the drugs no did he tell anyone what had happened he told me he didn't tell mom and dad is it because there's a lack of communication between teachers and kids and parents and students and in relationships to topics like this i don't know in other words do you think that uh would you do you find it hard to talk to your teacher about things like that why do you find it hard to talk to your parents who do you talk to them i was talking about my friends that's the only kind of person you could talk with then what are some of the questions that come up with your friends some of the problems you have what are they what do they ask or what do you ask them if uh you have this kind of discussion going on we don't need to discuss this once in a while do you have that kind of problem no i've never had any experience with drugs and i don't know anybody who uses germs there's something that interested me that i think one of them said um that you can get it anywhere wasn't it so you could get it in here or can you get it i mean i know that it's readily available but to me as an adult i bet i couldn't get it well like yesterday i had an offer to buy a joint and i turned it down a bit how much does something like this cost it comes you know some people sell it for different prices but yesterday he was selling it for 15 cents and but you know lots of people lots of kids in the school you know go around selling this stuff and you know i've got one friend and he can get and he can get lots of places you know like up at the high schools he knows people who can get it up there and i guess they get it down to down at paid and you know but lots of people in school almost half the school you know knows where to get it does the business of the law i mean this being illegal does this have any deterrent on youngster statement no no i don't think so so what do you what do you think then when you hear doctors for example disagreeing about whether or not smoking marijuana is harmful or beneficial have any of you heard about things like this where kids say it's not that bad it's not that harmful has anyone said that to you well yes but i think that it the doctors say that it is harmful because they know that once the kids start using it they'll start trying to use other narcotics you think that if a kid smokes pot that he's going to go into something higher than that yes because i'll be curious on um what it what it's like well um it's a it's a matter of if you if you um if you want to take it again then you'll take you'll go up but if you uh if you don't like it and you don't like the idea of getting uh going on a trip or something well then uh you it wouldn't you wouldn't go into a higher one because you know you don't like the first stage of it so you wouldn't want to go higher how can we get the first involved i think one reason defensive parents why it seems that they don't take any interest they don't know what to say they don't know what to do on so many things uh you come with a problem and they don't know any solution they can just say don't don't don't but that doesn't mean anything yeah but some of the parents too they're afraid to face the you know well i think they want to i think they want to though i think they want to help but they they can't communicate they can't get it across they say that some kids take it because their parents don't care about them but this is well most of the time we find that most of these kids take it because their parents care too much about them you know they won't let them go out or anything or they'll think they they'll treat them like little youngsters and they won't let them do anything but but the common thing is that there are difficulties between the child and his parents is that what you're saying difficulties of one sort or another you know like it's not right in some way either they're both having problems but because all kids that i think that take it not all of them but half of them you know most of them they take it because they're having problems some just take it out of your curiosity some just take it out you know they want to be in that's having problems but you know they're bored the differences among the children and among the adults seemed as great as the differences between the generations we then asked the consultants and the teachers to reflect on and discuss the effectiveness of this first encounter the children were invited to be observers feeling that there was very little focus to the discussion that it kind of and i feel a little frustrated about that it kind of wandered all over everywhere and i got no closure on having had a discussion or a dialogue about any one thing that it in some ways moved too fast move without direction why don't we just start simplistically and say what did you hear what did you do from the children and from some of the adults i heard a great deal of misinformation i heard some evidence of scare type teaching somewhere along the line confusion concern a great deal of concern with how do i talk to my mother my father confusion between the use of drugs and becoming adolescent growing up making a statement of what one is um confusion about whether people who use marijuana or other things are in fact maladjusted no mention at all of what kids like of that age are alike if you had a spontaneous conversation to arise in your classroom like today do you think that you could just zoom right in on it and and and you know and solve all everything right there it's going to be confusion right we're confused i'm confused about how to you know confess with kids about this subject i don't mean that there had to be a solution i'm i'm sure in my classroom they're seldom a solution i'm not sure there is a solution anybody has it to the question of drugs yeah but you're talking about focusing in on an area is there going to be an area that you can focus in on what i mean is the difference between simply mentioning something and talking about it in some kind of depth what did you learn from the students remarks and the interaction that went on there what kinds of things did you learn oh that they're doing a great more thinking than i think adults give them credit for they have much more knowledge than i think we give them credit for also they have very real problems which many times we do ignore or also i felt it was very valid their criticisms of adults i mean i think this is what adults want to know in this time of period why aren't we communicating why is there this credibility gap that you hear about and i think they pretty well answered this for me how did they answer it what did they say to you that you can remember specifically that parents don't take time and i think also that their criticism could be in the schools too directed to the schools in that we don't take time many times to talk to the kids i mean we are so highly structured as do we are teaching this and this and this and this and we never give the kids a real time to talk between themselves and interchange ideas with each other and with an adult that could act as just a sounding post form but i think they were trying to tell me that uh they're frustrated because of this inability to talk with adults that they would like to be able to talk to adults one of the things that's happening here is that and we saw this in the kids this morning and we saw this in the teachers we saw that some of the kids live and interact every day in a drug culture other kids live and interact in a culture which uh drugs are only on the periphery and they're they're not part of every day's decision-making process but for some of the kids it is we also saw that for the the teachers by and large that where they lived was with the kids for whom the drug culture was way out on the periphery not with the kids for whom it was a day by day decision i think part of the problem is is that the teacher has a very difficult time understanding the child who lives in the midst of the drug scene every day because they do and it's a different kind of life uh in many ways and i'm saying it's a different kind of life it's not a a better life or a worse life in many instances this is why the analogy of the rattlesnake is ridiculous because the the kids say look lady you're up there to take one of the kids in the drug culture you're up there saying all these things about grass honey there's 15 kids in this room uh who i was with you know two nights ago we're all stoned out of our minds and look we're still alive uh and so you've got some really uh some really empirical existential data in the heads of some of the kids and the teacher very often is put in the situation of making a perfect ass of themselves making a preachments from harry anslinger's book of parables without knowing what the facts are if if something comes up in my classroom about a drug since that we're talking marijuana and it's the first time it's ever come up there are going to be a lot of general statements a lot of fears concerns questions confusions right um and perhaps that's what this group is like but as i work with children i find that you know they can keep to a subject and they can let it take them wherever they want it to and it's all right with me wherever it goes i don't have to have a lesson plan and we've talked about this one because this is the information i've read for today kind of thing um and i see some value in in even taking like where we were today writing down the questions they have they can't be answered one of the things that i noticed in the the panel that we had was teachers began to very quickly take positions if we would transfer to a normal classroom i believe we'd find teachers once again taking these positions now if we're going to have an educational program what what can teachers do in playing their role to try to avoid taking a position which will perhaps influence the communication process between the young person and the teacher i think the teacher has a problem first of all the problem is one is is how how does a teacher relate to the child through the parent it's pretty hard to discuss this in the abstract in terms of student-teacher relationships if you cannot get the parent involved in this and many of the concerns i see with children in the classroom are the cause of a lack of dialogue between the parents and the kids themselves and this makes the job of the teacher vastly difficult you know you could say one thing to the child but it's another thing when the child goes home and says to the parent you know mr karen said so and so he did well that's none of his business i don't think like that and since when do you talk about drugs in the classroom well now imagine a feeling this childhood i mean who is this child going to listen to the parent or the teacher where is the dilemma here how is it going to be resolved this is a problem in the classroom i think this is what i'm trying to get to is that somehow if we're going to have an educational setting and try to share information that will be factual and knowledgeable that the young people can get additional information on which to base their decisions but somehow the person that's in charge of that formal structure we call a classroom is going to have to learn how to play a role which will let this information flow it appears that in approaching the drug problem there are many well-considered yet divergent points of view we asked the children how they were feeling about the success of the experiment they were not satisfied one said they're talking about it as if they were us and they aren't actually telling the truth another added they're talking about things about us and not about drugs the children wanted to set up their own group they asked for an adult to guide them we had not planned on doing this but felt it would be wise to explore solutions that the children themselves proposed maybe we could talk about anything that you want to talk about and especially how you felt about all this talking let's talk about drugs let's talk about drugs gasoline gasoline gasoline yeah okay and hairspray a glue slipper usually pours glue on a um a ball of socks or something you know you can uh-huh in a bag in a bag some are balled up in socks not socks usually yeah but you know they want to get how you put it in a bag and start sniffing it and you don't just go like this bag you put it all over you no paper bag and you go like but you know it's just like weed you can't just go and put it away because you know you don't really you don't really inhale it and you won't really get high so how do kids learn all of this [Music] friends friends and experiences from the other people they do it i mean they try it you know they hear about it around you know like they see it sometimes and then so they'll try it you know you know this i take up this habit too it looks good in a plastic bag no gasoline in the big tanks you know with the you know you getting gas stations and you just you know what does that do to you it really it you know first it makes you so like you go on the trip well not really the first time you don't really go on a trip you faint or something just makes you feel good like my friends said um you sniff it and you hit buzz like and you hear this buzz and you know it makes you feel really good and then they say after you keep on doing it for a while you just go into happy moments you know you feel really happy like like it turns you on you know i don't like what some people are interested they don't really hear anything or well they don't see any special thing you know they just see probably they'll see colors or something like that okay i'm gonna ask a question to mr schwartz and tell everybody else if um all those drugs are illegal and everything why isn't alcohol and cigarettes illegal too because that's just as bad as the other stuff and so it depends on what yeah depends on whatever marijuana cigarettes are illegal marijuana and um that's about the same as uh cigarettes because cigarettes you know can cause cancer and um you know it's about the same but yeah have have they ever had any test that marijuana has ever caused any cancer no i don't think they have yet and maybe they never will sort of like brain damage and cancer sort of like body damage or something like that there well still both the things alcohol and cigarettes are both doing um you know body damage damage to your body just the same as the other stuff so why don't they illegal um all the other drugs cancer i don't think does uh as much damage to your brain really it's just it does cancer in the lives and yeah but um it marijuana does more can't more uh more damage to your brain it doesn't necessarily kill you like cancer chemicals it doesn't marijuana doesn't damage your brain what does it do no proof of that brain damage but cigarettes don't make you high you say no no they do make it through me sometimes i'm dizzy with the smoke i hate the smoke so most of you tried smoking all right no yeah no i just said i i didn't say i started smoking i just said i got you [Music] but like sometimes if your friends like your friends will tell you come on it's a really great smoke and then they'll start just calling you names if you don't smoke and it's just like the drugs yeah so like what sometimes what you what i did once i just held the cigarette until it went out it's sometimes stuck in my mouth because i get dizzy and cough the first time i tried the cigarette was where we used to live a long time ago and this girl she gave me a puff and i held it in my mouth and ran to the door and rang it i mean knocked on the door and my mother opened i thought it was going to be my sister so i i exhaled all of it in my mother's face and she and i got in trouble yeah that discussion was just getting underway we will see more of it in the final program all of us were struck by the difference in tone the enthusiasm the excitement and the discussion that the children themselves set up we must remember however that the children asked for and utilized adult guidance we asked the consultants and teachers to meet once again and to comment on the whole experience particularly to focus on this last child-centered interaction one of the most interesting things to come out of their discussion was that they shifted the blame from parents on the reason for using drugs to peer pressures to being with the in crowd and they casually mentioned parents but they completely shifted the blame instead of putting the whole blame on parents they then begin to assume some responsibilities themselves for this and i at least this was the feeling i gathered from them i thought was quite interesting i i think another thing that they did too in shifting their perspective was they said very clearly that they wanted more information they said this very clearly they enjoyed the second part because they had more chance to find out about the things that really are important to them i think they finally got down to the to the points that they want to know about i think the call is there for help but what can we as educators do i think this is the question that we should try and answer for them i think uh the young people sitting there know better now what is going on in the drug culture or drug scene in which they're living so that they could make better choices and decisions themselves they managed to share certain information with one another the pushing point you don't have to be physically pushed to get into something you don't want you can be mentally pushed how are you mentally pushed how can you resist mental pushing what does it mean to be in all these issues are the key behavior modifiers that these kids are going to be using later in other words you can't tell a kid what to do how to do it how he should feel what he's supposed to do and what he should have felt in a situation you can only get to where he's feeling something and give him the opportunity to express himself and hear other kids express themselves and it isn't that a consensus of what is true is going to emerge from say the group but i think as they begin to learn to communicate with one another and talk about what a real friend is they're going to learn more about the drug culture and how to communicate with one another and what it means what you're really bringing up is in our school district we've been surveying statewide what people are doing and we find there really most of the programs by far that we have found are oriented to the factual area describing the substances what they think the effects are i say think because it changes so rapidly in some areas and this type of thing what where you've come to the conclusion in our district the important thing is just as you say you sort of have to have a background to this thing a foundation but the more important thing is the individual in this thing and how these things impinge upon him and what controls he has over his own future not over somebody else's but what he himself has in the way of controls over what he does and how to do this in our preliminary surveys with young people at the fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade we find they really don't understand the decision the the parts of the decision-making process and how to use them at their level and something we believe it can be taught point is as kids begin to describe how they're living how they're feeling what's happening around them what emerges is how they made decisions in the past or how people make decisions and that's what they learn from how other people did it they said that i look at my friend and i see how he acts this is kind of an indirect but direct experience namely through a friend their own eyes their own ears that's what they trust so to give them an arena where someone hopefully can ask the right kind of questions to get the conversation sort of guided along certain channels i mean i was brought back to drugs about four times by a little sign being flashed in my face that's great because i would have just assumed sat there and so were the kids i think and just talked about anything i'll tell you this they would have come away with a sense of who they were and how they might make some choices but adults are not doing this nowadays either there are many adults that are in the same boat of not having the chance to interact and really define their own role as their playing it right it takes interaction kids are a little easier you know they define role when you're a little baby you cry and you get something and you also have fun and don't have any responsibilities about the timing to the fourth grade you got more responsibilities and i would say that's when the conformity thing starts in the school system and you're expected to behave shut up know how to read well you get graded marked measured and all these adult type pressures get laid on just about that time and that's when the kids say we've got problems and that's when we're going to escape the same way the adults escape and you know there it is so what are you going to do about it what are we going to do about it there is no easy answer today we've seen some of the solutions and some of the problems in effectively communicating we've seen some of the attitudes of experts teachers and children we have seen that the initial apprehension can be overcome but that effort is required by everyone today's program has been an exercise in listening as well as observing as individuals school systems or as communities there is much we can do and are doing there is more to be done [Music] [Music] [Music] you