In certain cities, it is a "no-no" to say that drugs are having an
effect upon education. Those who choose to discuss the issue,
are usually rebuked harshly, or told they must not be so blatant.
And with this attitude being pervasive, there are few people who
dare to come forward to discuss this crisis which is plaguing
elementary, middle schools, junior high, high schools and colleges
everywhere.
I was curious about the volume of drugs which entered my
city. I wanted to know when they began coming, and what
effect they were having on life in general. I asked a prominent
landlord when the drugs began to come into my city. He told me
it was l985. In that year he began to see a rapid decline of his
tenants' cooperation in making their rent payments to him.
Having worked in the educational field for a large portion of
my life, I have seen the effects of drugs on students. They have
indeed, taken a toll on our society to the degree that the cognitive
processes of a large majority of students have become impaired.
In my locale, we have been asked why we have so many children
who qualify for Special Education services. Schools everywhere
are grappling over the issue in silence.
In homes where drugs are taken, many of the children inhale
marijuana second hand. One teacher told me an "A" student
suddenly became a "C" student when winter came, and then
returned back to being an "A" student when the winter was
over. She talked with the girl and found out her parents smoked
marijuana. The teacher made the deduction that when winter
came, the windows were closed in the girl's home, and plastic
was put up to keep the heat in, thus preventing fresh air to
circulate in the home. The student in the home was therefore
exposed to the marijuana smoke and thus, was under its
influence during the winter months.
At a teachers' convention, I happened into a session which
was seeking to discuss the issue of identifying drug babies and
how to successfully work with them. I sat there for over an hour,
and guess what-- even the presenter had nothing conclusive
or concrete to tell us. I was appalled. Here, experts were being
paid to address the issue, but they were very weak in coming
out with any answers.
Drugs alter the mind. Teachers find themselves unable to move
on to new materials because the previous material which they
have taught is muddled, and often forgotten in a short space of
time. As many put it, "Their minds are messed up!" It is very
frustrating to have students say, "We never learned this." I
once confronted a teacher in the grade below me. There was
a prerequisite concept which my class did not have. When
I approached the teacher, she assured me she had covered the
concept near the end of the previous year, and she could not
understand why the students claimed they had never been
exposed to it.
A friend of mine who works for Job Corp told me many of his
students' minds are seared. We call it "burned up" because of
drugs. He said the only thing he could do was to try to teach to the
long term memory. In this process, one must teach the same
concept over and over until it is fixed in the mind. The average
person takes 30 exposures . With the drug impaired mind,
it may take anywhere from 30-60.
I have seen so many beautiful young people who take drugs.
They are "would be's" in a society where they should be
"could be's". They drop out of school, and later find themselves
in the prison system. They allow their lives to become a zero.
Some die while out there, and others never recover their right
mind. Their red eyes, droopy eyelids, slurred speech, and
slow reactionary time attest to the fact that even the best of
teachers would have a hard time penetrating their will and
desires to learn.
What are drugs doing to education. For many, they are
causing a decline in test scores. Drugs can be blamed for
creating a society of non-productive students who do not
seize educational opportunities. Drugs are educating our
children to prepare them for jails and prisons. They are
preparing them to be thieves, prostitutes, liars, and servants
of the street. Millions of taxpayers dollars are thrown away
each year as educational consultants come into drug infested
school districts to "solve the problems existing".
And no,
they are never solved. Someone just went away with a pocket
full of money, laughing all the way to the bank. And the cycle
repeats. Hopefully, more will take the courage to address this
grave unsolved problem. Hopefully, more initiatives will be taken
by civic groups and city fathers to reduce this criminal behavior.
It would be nice to annihilate it altogether for the next generation.
That may be asking too much, but if churches, industry, and
concerned organizations can ban together to address this
problem, we will all be the recipients of "a new day" in the
future.
