D.A.R.E.
Drug Abuse Resistance Education
by: Gail Lang

Targeting 4^th and 5^th graders (9-11 year olds), specially trained police officers go into special area classrooms for one hour a week for seventeen weeks. This class time is structured and not unlike other special area classes such as art, music, and PE. The officers remain on campus during the day of instruction to interact directly with the students. The program is simple enough in its concept focusing on four major areas:

• Provide accurate information on drugs and alcohol
• Teach decision making skills
• Show students how to resist peer pressure
• Give students ideas for alternatives to drug use

DARE works from a specific curriculum and leads each lesson carefully into the next. One week they work on self esteem, and the next they build on the self esteem by blending the skill of being assertive. The program focuses on drug awareness, but from my own view and interviews with officers working in our area it is overall a communication program. DARE teaches children to deal with the reality of society. This teaches success of character rather than material wealth.

• To teach success by measuring one's own happiness and accomplishments.
• To be able to practice peer mediation
• To be able to recognize and build self esteem
• To build decision making skills
• To learn how to encourage others
• To respect their own body
• To look at the big picture and evaluate the truth behind people's words
• To know how to say no, or how to avoid potentially dangerous situations

The program teaches these objectives through 17 planned lessons:

1. Introduction of DARE
2. Understanding the Effects of Mind-Altering Drugs
3. Considering Consequences
4. Changing Beliefs About Drug Use
5. Learning Resistance Techniques -- Ways to Say No
6. Building Self-Esteem
7. Learning Assertiveness - a Response Style
8. Managing Stress Without Taking Drugs
9. Reducing Violence
10. Combating Media Influences on Drug Use and Violence
11. Making Decisions About Risky Behaviors
12. Saying Yes to Positive Alternatives
13. Having Positive Role Models
14. Resisting Gang and Group Violence
15. Summarizing DARE Lessons
16. Taking a Stand
17. DARE Culmination

The benefits of the program are many. Having officers in the classroom teaching these skills is effective. There have been numerous accounts of children crediting their experience with DARE for helping them to thwart an improper approach by strangers. I've seen for myself the strength of children to say "No" in the face of drugs, and to understand what it was they had been offered. It also helps to promote a familiarity between officers and children facilitating both the role model and law enforcement function of the police officer. While building trust and friendship, these officers are also able to help our children see the truth and facts about drugs and alcohol. The officers realize that some of the students will still experiment with drugs and alcohol, but the hope is that even in that experimentation they will remember the knowledge they have learned, and hopefully will still choose to turn back away from drugs. No one is perfect, and we all make mistakes in life, but it is important that the children understand that no mistake is so great that it cannot be corrected if the desire is strong enough.

The program is not perfect, and cannot by itself prevent our children from being hurt, but it can provide them with usable knowledge to learn to make better decisions. No one single effort can in itself stop wrong and make right, but this one at least tries to make a dent. Working with such young impressionable minds, sometimes that little bit of a dent can make the difference. It's hard to judge, to really tell if the program is successful, but it's an attempt to teach and protect our children. DARE is something that can make a difference, and I feel that we must support any effort to teach our children to be better and stronger adults.

Previous / Next