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Re: Want to play in HS band? Pass a drug test

Author: Ski
Date: 2007-08-21 07:16

bstutsman,

First off, I will gently remind you that we are talking about kids, not adults.

I'd also like to gently remind you that we're talking about kids, not adults.

You, like many other contributors here, seem intent on turning this into a discussion on civil rights.

I don't feel this is a matter of civil rights at all. It's about common sense (or the lack thereof), it's about not shaping a child's future based on chemical tests. And my position here is also to point out the skewed thinking that believes that drug use and extracurricular activities are inherently linked.

Speaking of chemical tests, would you want to see youre child's future in music or sports decided by a false positive because he had a poppy seed bagel the previous day for lunch? Or because his creatinine level was high due to extra-scholatically sponsored extra-curricular sports activities? Or because his pee got mixed up with some other kid's pee in the lab?

But the real point of all this is to help kids who have problems.

Sorry, but you're wrong. The focus of the ruling is on kids who are interested in participating in extracurricular activities, with the (loud and clear) inference being that kids who want to play sports or get involved in music are more prone to getting involved with drugs/alcohol.

If you really want to help kids who have a drug/alcohol problem, common sense dictates (to me anyway) that you shouldn't punish them or shun them --- instead, you help them (counseling, therapy, rehab in bad cases, or perhaps some good old fashioned grounding by their parents). But you can't help a child by shutting them out of important and perhaps ephipanal life experiences they haven't yet had by dint of the fact that they ARE children.

Children haven't yet fully formed distinctions between right and wrong. Children, particularly teens, are prone to rebellion as well as curiosity, both quite normal human qualities which you can't legislate or drug-test or even scare out of a kid. "Kids will be kids." Some kids will dabble in drugs/alcohol and some won't, just like some kids will dabble in shoplifting and some won't. But it's not just the kids who want to play in the band or be on the basketball team who are prone to this kind of rebellion, curiosity, and experimentation; these traits are common to the entire student body! And it is for this reason that this decision by the school board is so blatantly wrong, if not also discriminatory. For me, however, the discriminatory aspect is tangential.

We hear in the news how the occasional entertainer or sports figure winds up with a drug problem. So should budding musicians/athletes be guilty by association? But if this is to be the case, then kids wanting to participate in a school's video and broadcasting programs should be tested also ---- wouldn't want them to end up like Rush Limbaugh. And I'm sure examples could be found for druggies in all walks of life, not just those whose problems are given exposure because they're celebrities.

Post Edited (2007-08-21 20:26)

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