METH EDUCATION NOT A SCHOOL TASK

Two Southeast Missouri State University educators have come up with a plan in the fight against methamphetamines by writing a proposal for a grant to fund anti-meth education of third-graders.

The plan, announced last week at a press conference at the university attended by Gov. Mel Carnahan, will be tested this fall in 65 school districts in 16 counties of Southeast Missouri, where methamphetamines are considered a big problem. If the pilot program works, it will be passed on to teachers in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The project is funded by a $39,000 grant from the Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and the state as a continuation of the statewide "Life or Meth" public-service campaign begun in 1997. HIDTA brings together federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the war against meth.

Plans to expand the meth lessons to other grades also exist. Development is ongoing for an interactive computer program to teach fifth- and sixth-graders about meth and videos for seventh through 12th grades. In all instances, teachers must first learn how to teach the curriculum.

Methamphetamine has climbed in popularity among drug users. It has become a drug of choice for many because it can be made inexpensively from commonly found substances. Because meth labs put off such a detectable odor, manufacturers have taken to rural areas to make the drug, and that is why HIDTA was set up in the six mainly rural states.

Drug education programs come and go in the nation's schools, but to find credible statistics on whether they are successful is next to impossible. Like any drug-education program, no one can know whether a program is successful without following each student who participated to determine who did and who didn't later use drugs. How, then, after only a year as a pilot program can a realistic determination be made on whether it is successful enough to expanded?

No one can argue against the need to educate children about the dangers of methamphetamines. But it isn't the public schools' responsibility to do so.

More and more these days, schools are being called upon to teach children about society's ills when teachers should be devoting all of their time to teaching the basics. Anti-drug education is better left to parents, whose responsibility it is to teach their children rights and wrongs.