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How far is too far?

Schools across the country have asked themselves this question many times, when trying to figure out the most effective approach for educating students on alcohol awareness. Drinking and driving awareness programs are common in most high schools in the nation. But an article from ABC News has BoardBuzz thinking about how school districts can effectively reach students and if some schools are going too far in their efforts. El Camino High School in Oceanside, Calif. shocked students on a Monday morning by having a uniformed police officer enter several classrooms to inform students that some of their peers had been killed in a drunk driving accident. A brief eulogy was given and a rose placed on the students' desk. Emotional, tearful, and, understandably, hysterical reactions ensued. Two hours later,the school?s juniors and seniors watched their "dead" classmates be pulled out from a wrecked car, streaked with blood. The charade ended and the students were told that the entire grief-creating incident was designed to teach them about the very real dangers of drinking and driving. The graphic and almost too-real experience definitely has students and parents talking and as the article shows, feeling very divided over the program:

"It was outrageous," says one parent who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. "My daughter came home a wreck -- she didn't get over it for days. She was more freaked out than educated about drunk driving." The school was divided over the program in the first few days. "Some [of those] who were upset felt that they'd been duped & some were so caught up in feeling they were tricked that they didn't get the message," says Brittany Bennett, the editor of the school paper, who played one of the dead students. "It was about half and half. I was nervous about going to school the next day -- I heard that people were angry." But Bennett says that most students, including friends of hers who sent her frantic text messages when they heard about the "accident," got the message and said that it would stop them from drinking and driving. "You need something this graphic to wake up to the fact that it's real, that this happens all the time."

So BoardBuzz asks, what's the answer? Do these scare-tactics programs have long term effects? Richard A. Yoast, director of the American Medical Association's Office of Alcohol and Other Drugs, says," They create awareness, but there is not much evidence that they change behaviors." It looks like BoardBuzz is still searching for an answer. What do you think? One thing's for sure -- we're glad that school districts are taking steps to educate students on the dangers of alcohol, but we hope they continue to research the most effective ways to do it.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on June 06, 2008 (boomark / email).