Commentary - (2022) Volume 8, Issue 2
Received: 31-Jan-2022, Manuscript No. IPJDA-22-12788; Editor assigned: 02-Feb-2022, Pre QC No. IPJDA-22-12788 (PQ); Reviewed: 16-Feb-2022, QC No. IPJDA-22-12788; Revised: 21-Feb-2022, Manuscript No. IPJDA-22-12788 (R); Published: 28-Feb-2022, DOI: 10.36648/2471-853X.22.8.80
For academic educators, a lot of mystifying questions have been raised related with the concerns of drug abuse among youth. How should schools respond to their constructed curriculum? What are the legitimate, ethical, and academic (educational) responsibilities of school engaged individuals and school systems? Do these institutes contribute in any way to activity of anti-social behavior (drug abuse) of some school going students? What may be the insinuations for the roles of class-room educators? The main concentration is on last question that will explore in the present study.
The time and energy of class-room educators are put under tremendous strain. Requests of Administration, concerns about joint bargaining, and many parental demands, are only illustrative. There is no need of explanation about this factual knowledge of educational life. There is no doubt and is important, educational techniques, conceptions, verbal or non-verbal collections and particularly the needs of the students, all seek the attention and commitment of educators. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, therefore, if school oriented educators adopt the principle of “wait and see” approach regarding the recent curriculum raft or medicinal, lawful and social evils the institutes are being asked to confront. This is significantly related to the menace of drug abuse.
When in the late 80’s, drug related education was first introduced in some academic institutions, at that time, the most common intention was to deliver information about illicit drugs and their effects to school admitted students. But, it’s hard to believe for some people, we are loosening the stage of success, we all know that, this strategy didn’t work out completely, as we seen the recent figures published from various reports such as World Health Organization, World Drug Report and other international agencies, all shows increasing trends of drug abuse scenario. School Students were consistently miss-guided with the bunch of erroneous or outdated or inaccurate information. The state of our facts or understanding was not more than it is in today global world (even its still in the state of incompletion). Moreover, academic institutions have often their limitations; they didn’t go beyond ambiguous assumptions that are being set about the motives and values of their activities related with drug abuse education. Realistic goals and objectives, which have been tested in the real world of school institutions, have lately been given attention, because of the failure of idealistic commitments. Differentiation of efforts based on the needs of the students, reflecting the risk-taking dispositions among young minds, simply did not occur. Were we interested to put an end the era of drug related experimentation, limiting use of experiment, encouraging those who were unlikely to experiment, or providing knowledge for individuals to make their own decisions? Precision and accuracy were often lacking.
In addition, we often supposed the sole perpetrators for them. Young minds were to be the targets and the techniques and strategies were to be the outdated. If we fill their minds with the practical and updated information and possibly they would take the best decision or so we hoped.
The repercussions produced by this approach were equally important. The main effect was to create a credibility gulf between school educators and school students, the zone to which we definitely return shortly. Another negative problem which is created with the rise of informational approach was the effect it had on academic educators. For the educators, who allotted with the role of drug teaching, their results didn’t fulfill the targets and were discouraging. These educators often felt poor in order to perform this task. For some people who are not involved directly, the belief that education could not or should not be involved was reinforced. And for some others whose personal wish to become involved, little or no encouragement and/or training was available.
Unfortunately, from several past years we moved far from this approach. Interventions through educational programs results very effective and we not focusing merely on the drugs themselves, but also analyze the societal attitudes and the situations and circumstances which make individuals vulnerable towards drug abuse and specifically focus on the person abusing drugs. Another important area that these broader academic institutions have successfully included as part of drug abuse programs in totality includes: creating an environment of trust building and free communication; review regarding the application of drug abuse policies and programs; introduces quality and influential education in academic-rooms (classrooms); Facilitating more access to grasp updated knowledge about the socio-legal aspects of the drug abuse behavior; providing opportunities to students in decision making process in those areas that are more important for them; and create the atmosphere of rewarding experiences between students and their watching subjects.
What we should think that the current approach indicate for the educators? By “deconstruct the meaning and facts about drugs” as the sole approach, it precludes the question of teachers feeling, that they need to become specialists in all the aspects of pharmacological drugs in order to deal with the issues of drug abuse and concerns of school going children regarding the occurrences of the drug use in their schoolrooms. The influence of educators may be different, but those who are very sensitive and cares for their student’s mental and intellectual needs, they are contributing towards the reduction of generation and credibility gap between adults and students and at the same time boost their self-image with full of positivity; two factors which seem to be have close connection with drug abuse.
“Ashley Montagu” a noted anthropologist, claims that all the educators also have in a position to play the role of counselor in fulfilling his job as a teacher and “find out the hidden talents and personality uniqueness of the student and make them prepare for the most important skill, specifically noted as the “skill of human relations”. Montagu stated that “education caring is the only possible way through which, this can be done, and can be attained only, if the educators played an affective role” refer to Montagu A (1969) Man Observed. New York: Tower Publications. What is caring through education, how does it look like? For beginners, one can see it as development of communication skills in school-rooms.
Understanding is fundamental for both the “senders end and receivers end”, and the gateway of understanding is communication, which is an integral part of an interpersonal relationship. Communication also shapes the nature and degree of interactive clashes between senders and receivers.
We all doing conversation with opposites and listens them what actually they want to say, but the skill of communication fall short of nurturing effective responses in interpersonal relationships. Successful and satisfying relationships have a nature of that communication which is free from suppression barriers or in which an individual feel free to communicate flexibly and naively.
One should be clear when talk about effective communication, which denotes the exchange and expression of ideas, opinions, and concerns in a situation which is open and free from any barrier mechanisms. In these open and free situations, people are more willing to consider alternatives, to test the untested, and to take their responsibilities very seriously refer to Demak L, Kaminsky E, Paskal D (1973) Things to Do to Build Communication and Trust. Detroit, Michigan: DARTE, Wavne County Intermediate School District, revised edition.
Another important characteristic of school systems where education caring is visible is the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills. In every facet of their existence, today’s youth are confronted with more choices and opportunities. But decisions related with the scene of drug use or abuse is crucial ones. Without the proper training of critical inquiry, they may well let others, particularly with their peer groups, make these decisions for them. It’s important to give them space for decision making processes at early as possible, particularly in elementary grades, by which the teenagers develop differential tools and approaches, so they can make their individuality capable to deal with these questions, refer to Demak L, Kaminsky E, Paskal D (1972) Decision: Drugs, Values. Detroit, Michigan: DARTE, Wayne County Intermediate School District. Advancement in technologies proved beneficial, also for drug abuse education through various training tools such as curriculum development, video lecturing of small and large areas, simulations, practicality through workshops that make the individuals well aware about the fact of drug abuse refer to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2004) Schools: School-Based Education for Drug Abuse Prevention; New York: United Nations Publication.
When there is conflict over values and sentiments, teachers can play an important role, because they have the potential to clarify their stand points regarding their sentiments and value systems. Values have nothing, to do with the fact. But to some extent they are closely connected with the emotions of individuals appear to have little to do with reality all too often. Individual prejudices and personal emotions are also linked to values. “Emotion is clearly an enormously essential role in many of the decisions we make, “the Kalants argue, “and it is very reasonable that this should be the case in domains of value judgment” refer to Kalant H, Kalant O (1971) Drugs, Society, and Personal Choice. Ontario, Canada: Paperjacks.
An important aspect of classroom structure is that, efforts have been made to help young people to understand their emotions and values as they can differentiate the moral and immoral aspects and decision-making behaviors. Another aspect which need to be included in a well-structured program is the implementation of a strategy that incorporates the model demonstrated by Allan Y. Cohen “the Alternatives Model” which emphasizes on the diversion strategies from the factors causes drug abuse, by developing other alternatives for example the development of alternative attitudes, techniques, institutional changes and lifestyles which could reduce the desire of drug addiction in order to attain the legitimate aspirations. Cohen convincingly stated that the art of living is a skill, which is not reflected from the academic curriculum and suggests the development of other alternatives as the best prevention [1].
The comment on drug education needs to be mentioned by the Cornacchia, Bental, and Smith, in one of the most influential and well organized discussions;
The direct and linked patterns of instruction are commonly referred to, by the organizational patterns of formal drug education. Direct pattern implies, that drug education is not a subject but as a part of a subject that usually deals with many health problems and aims to improve the status of health among student population; this can be done in health education. On the other end, the pattern of correlation implies that instruction is associated with other areas in the curriculum that didn’t specifically focus on health issues or practices, as we seen in social sciences. Attitudes and behaviors in health education are health-oriented and people-cantered; in other curriculum areas, the goals are more likely to be cognitive in nature and focus on the objectives of cognitive matters. In most cases, cognitive goals have little or no impact on good health.
These direct and correlated pattern instructions are differentiated easily at the level of secondary schools, but more complicated at the level of elementary. At elementary level, by using the direct pattern one may find drug education as a part of health education. Consequently, it has been seen that drug education would have equal status of social sciences or other language subjects. The direct arrangement might also refer to specific drug units that may be part of broader health education or it may entirely independent as distinct subject of instruction. It can also be defined as drug related education is correlated with the subjects of social science studies. In such circumstances, it can be said that drug education to be correlated but at the same time it can also be said that drug education is to be integrated into the curriculum. Although, these phrases such as “correlated” and “integrated” used synonymously at the elementary levels. Possibly, the condition of distinction can be made on the basis of, if the elementary level students on daily basis faced only single educator as we seen in the self-contained classroom, a subject might be said that its integrated into the curriculum, while if they exposed with a number of educators on daily basis with various subjects, here, it can be said, there is a correlation between the subject and curriculum refer to Cornacchia H, Bentel D, Smith D (1973) Drugs in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for School Programs. St. Louis: The CV. Mosby Company.
I would like to conclude with one last point. The conception of support group is not new in the era within a school system. But it has gained valid significance with respect to the education of drug abuse. Our observations depicts, a school system that does not have any effective support system is unlikely to be succeed, irrespective of how ambitious their efforts are. There are several possible ways to build this strong support system: a group of officers, students, teachers, parents, study groups, social workers, and particularly an official committee whom members are specifically deals with drug issue, are more likely to influence the environment of drug abuse. The main aims and objectives for these team groups may include: intervention and development of prevention programs for drug abuse, committee of parental monitoring on their daily actions, investigating the rude behavior of students in schools, need based and updated modification of existing policies and programs.
Regardless whatever the format a school system chooses, we need to support and encourage the official personalities (educators) who are contributing directly or indirectly in subject of drug abuse education. Academic world should develop sustainable drug education curricula aimed to create a harm minimization approach in order to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of drugs by minimizing or limiting the harms and hazards of drug use. We believe that drug education can make a huge difference in our institutions refer to State Government of Victoria (2021). Education and Training (drug education). Australia.
We are thankful to the academicians for their valuable information related with the field of drug addiction research, to the staff of the University for their Outstanding Suggestions and help.
Authors declare no conflict of interest.
Citation: Khanday SA (2022) School Education and Drug Abuse: The Prevention in Focus. J Drug Abuse Vol.8 No.2:80.
Copyright: © Khanday SA. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
