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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - May 26 2003
Drug testing bid will alienate helpless
children
What are schools for? If you answered education, maybe you're a
little out of date - at least in Northland where education seems
to be low on the list of one school's priorities.
Instead, Kaitaia College principal William Tailby is considering
allowing the school to be used by the police to gather information
about methamphetamine use outside its gates.
In what is being portrayed as a voluntary procedure, the college
is asking parents for permission to drug test their children during
school hours. Not because it's discovered pupils using the drug
or even has suspicions about drug-induced behaviour during school
hours, but because the local cop says the use of methamphetamine,
or P, is growing in the wider community.
No one is suggesting that drug use in schools be condoned, but
in Kaitaia, where Senior Constable Brian Camplin seems to be using
his role as a school-board member to facilitate his day job as a
police officer, kids testing positive will be handed over to the
police. In essence, it's a policing shortcut for Mr Camplin and
a nice anti-drug flag for the school to wave.
So does drug-testing work? A study reported in last week's New
York Times of 76,000 students across the United States found that
drug use is just as common in schools with testing as in those without
it.
Dr Lloyd D. Johnston, a study researcher from the University of
Michigan, said: "It's the kind of intervention that doesn't win
the hearts and minds of children. I don't think it brings about
any constructive changes in their attitudes about drugs or their
belief in the dangers associated with using them."
Drug testing anywhere inevitably brings up the issue of reliability.
False negative and false positive results can, and do, occur. Prescribed
medicines and even herbal teas can skew the results. When drug testing
is then used as a rationale to expel students, a false positive
test may have dreadful consequences for an innocent child.
If the school intends to target only certain students, what criteria
will they use, given there is no evidence of the drug being used
at school? It then becomes an issue similar to the debate on racial
profiling.
Do you pick children out because they have features consistent
with drug abuse or do you insist that all students be tarred with
the same brush? This would immediately leave the school open to
charges of discrimination, not to mention invasions of privacy.
Interpretation of results is also crucial. Most tests reveal only
if a student has used a drug recently. It will not tell if the drug
was used once as an experiment or more regularly, or if it was used
at school.
And then there's the culture of cheating that drug testing inspires.
I'm reliably informed that drug tests can and are being beaten in
New Zealand, using not only products readily available on-line but
even things like tossing salt or strands of hair coated with hairspray
into urine samples.
Certainly the threat of getting caught might limit the drug use
of some students, but think about drug use for a minute. Across
society there are varying levels from the purely experimental to
recreational to committed use. But in teens drug use is generally
an outward symbol of social context: of adolescent experimentation,
of dysfunctional homes, and a whole plethora of juvenile issues.
Surely it would be more apposite for Mr Tailby and his staff to
put their resources behind more pro-active services such as identifying
those under the influence of drugs and providing warnings, detentions
and counselling.
Rather than spending limited education budgets on drug testing,
the school would better serve its community by providing parents
with resources and by providing special programmes that keep students
on track - from smaller class sizes to activities that build self-discipline
like music enrichment and sport.
Under Mr Tailby's proposal, Kaitaia College, rather than being
a nexus of learning, creativity and enthusiasm, offering guidance
and support as part of its learning experience, would be shutting
its doors to both longer-term users and first-time experimenters,
ensuring those children remain alienated and helpless.
Drug testing demonstrates a lack of trust between school staff
and students, it reinforces suspicion and could create victimisation
and alienation. The school will be turned into an extension of the
law-enforcement community, monitoring the private activities of
pupils and then acting on behalf of the police.
While drug testing at Kaitaia College may, in the short term, boost
Mr Camplin's arrest record and earn him brownie points with the
school board, it will alter irrevocably the relationship between
the school, its pupils and the wider community.
It will destroy the open communication needed to adequately understand
and support students at risk of methamphetamine use, and it has
the potential to turn ordinary adolescents into criminals.
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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