Mandatory Drug Testing in High Schools is Needed and Effective - PowerPoint Presentation Example

A close and unbiased assessment of each of these contentions, however, points to fundamental weaknesses in their formulation and, by extension, to the merits of proactive efforts at assuring drug-free students and drug-free schools. There are a number of fundamental values and related underlying assumptions at work in consideration of organized proactive efforts at preventing drug—and, for that matter, alcohol—abuse among students. Considered in the abstract, a school is in many respects an artificially created society in which a group of (we hope) mature adults is organized to convey a spectrum of information to a likely less mature group of adolescents.

Absorption of that information—A K A, the curriculum—is intended to both facilitate the adolescents’ entry into responsible, independent adulthood and, equally important, acquire skill sets that will eventually translate into improved employment prospects. Needless to say, both the students in particular and society at large have vested interests in favorable outcomes in this endeavor. Having said all that, it must be emphasized that the school environment—however loath we are to admit it—cannot be all that democratic and still function effectively.

First, there is a built-in assumption that the teachers know more than the students (whatever the latter may think). And, as a corollary, achieving the objective of conveying knowledge to the student body must eventually take precedence over the parochial interests of its individual members that might inhibit that effort. Second, in many respects a school’s administration is effectively in the position of acting in loco parentis. This is not a privilege. It is a responsibility and it is one that schools cannot casually disregard.

Each of these factors is implicated in any in-school drug-prevention program. It is eminently reasonable to argue