By Tommy Kelleher
Contributing Writer
From car crashes, to felonies, to violent episodes and even deaths, the chapters on alcohol and soft drug use in Mira Costa’s health textbook “Lifetime Health” are meant to rouse fear. The book presents radical, often misleading statistics about alcohol and marijuana, giving the impression that trying drugs or alcohol once will likely lead to addiction and misery. In theory, such warnings dissuade students from using alcohol; however, the book’s content does not correspond with what many teens experience in their high school years, and thus delegitimizes the source as a whole.
The California state standards for health education require that high school students are taught 23 standards regarding alcohol and drug use. In Mira Costa, this requirement is carried out through the mandatory health education, in which students read the textbook “Lifetime Health”‘published by Holt Rinehart Winston.
The portions on alcohol and drug use in both California’s state standards and “Lifetime Health” focus on health risks. Only four of the 23 standards deal with influences that cause students to start using drugs, and not a single standard acknowledges that students choose to begin using drugs. Rather than empowering students by giving them accurate information and allowing them to make choices based on it, health education creates the misconception that nobody truly wants to begin using drugs, but some abstract force—usually peer pressure in their examples—compels them onto this path.
If drug education ever does give a specific situation in which a student might be tempted to try drugs, these are usually unrealistic and disconnected. One of the most ridiculous clichés from drug education is this oft-repeated scenario: During the course of one conversation or activity, a mischievous drug-user with an impressive social status aggressively pressures an innocent friend into trying some drug. The friend has to use a variety of tactics to refuse the hit. According to many teens, such as Freshman Lauren Marinelli! the scenario is absurd.
Though its passages about influences are vague and unrealistic, health education goes into great detail regarding the danger of drugs and alcohol. For example, the first section in “Lifetime Health’s” the chapter on alcohol is titled “Alcohol Affects the Body.” It focuses on the long-term effects of alcohol in order to present the most terrifying facts. Instead, health education should focus on the short term effects of alcohol and drugs that teens are likely to experience.
For a time, “Lifetime Health” accomplishes its goal; it rouses fear. Students who are only exposed to health education’s perspective on drugs are inevitably worried that they will become addicts. They abstain from drug use and try to stay away from groups that use drugs. Eventually, however, many of these students are exposed to an entirely different reality of alcohol and drug use. What they witness seems extremely tame in comparison to what they have been prepared for, and the absurdity of what they have been taught becomes blatantly clear. This is when students try drugs—when the didacticism and fear which they have been taught loses all of its legitimacy.
Proponents of health education believe that students must be educated disproportionately about the dangers of drug use because this is what students do not know, but in order to make the best decisions, students need an unbiased, applicable text that never distorts the truth.
Accordingg to Marinelli, when the health book exaggerates or twists facts, students no longer feel that they can trust any portions of it. Furthermore, when students learn how drugs and alcohol are used by Costa students, they are going to see the alcohol and drug portions as lies.
In order to decrease the alcohol and soft drug problem on the Mira Costa campus, teachers and administrators must address the situations that Costa students witness. Rather than following the book, health teachers should give applicable advice to students regarding drug use. This way, students will see that their decisions are truly in their hands, and they also will be less likely to dismiss the ideas from health education in the future. If the truth is presented, students are empowered.
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