[EFmom]

My kids aren't old enough for it yet, but their school has the program. We will not allow our children to participate.

There are lots of things wrong with the program. First of all, I think it is a colossal waste of money, resources and teaching time. I would much rather that my children were learning math, science, art or music during the time that is squandered on DARE. I would also prefer that police officers were spending their taxpayer funded time doing something which actually improves the safety of my community. Despite the enormous hype around it, there is no proof that DARE works. To the contrary, there is even some evidence that kids who go through the program are actually more likely to take drugs than those who do not. I will not have my children indoctrinated to believe this "war on drugs" is anything but the tragic waste that it is.

For more on what is wrong with DARE, see http://www.drcnet.org/DARE/

Evidently, the school needs you to give permission to enroll them in DARE. I'm sure I will be one of the few, if not the first, parent to refuse permission. They will have to find something else to do with my child during this time, but if it's just sending her to the library to read, I'm fine with that.

 

[EFmom]

Quote:

My gut tells me the DARE program will be ok. I mean, they've already spent the money. I don't want my son to do drugs. So I must be missing the part where it's bad.

I don't want my child to do drugs either, and the evidence is that kids who go through the DARE program are MORE likely to do drugs than those who do not.

As for them already spending the money, if I want the school to improve, whether for my kids or for kids yet to come, I need to take a stand. If a handfull of kids out of every class don't go through DARE, the school will be forced to come up with Plan B. I did say that I'd be happy to just send my kid to the library during the DARE hours, and I would rather she did that than go to DARE. But that's not the way I'm going to present it to the school administration. I'm going in there to talk to them about providing high quality instruction during the DARE hours.

 

[EFmom]

Wow, I've never heard of DARE being offered to a first grade class before. Where I am it's 4th or 5th, depending on the school.

Personally, I don't have a problem with sex ed classes, unless they are of the "abstinance-only" variety. My big problem is with schools continuing very expensive, time-wasting programs that have been shown over and over again not to work (so the abstinance-only programs fit in that category).