And now you get even less of a chance to deal with them than 10 or 15 years ago. And also, when I was at Berkeley the drug scene was just starting, and I was pretty involved in it at the beginning. I have never found it necessary to discuss with the kids my vantage point as an ex-user, or anything like that. That's much less important than what's going on with them, and that's one of the reasons why I think this ex-addict type of thing is just not necessarily appropriate or the best way to go. One of the problems we found in trying to help other people start programs is that there are many principals who won't admit there is a problem at their school. They feel personally threatened by the fact that the kids are using drugs. To the extent where the school nurse, in a lot of schools, has to contact us and say, "Gee, every kid we get in this office is on drugs, and the principal just won't face that fact." So what we are doing now is trying to work with faculty, the administration, the PTA, and the kids themselves, and we did that in Van Nuys at the junior high school. And the response has been very favorable. The kids are really turned on about the idea of having some kind of groups in the school. They identified five teachers whom they felt would be good. The teachers were also interested, and I guess that's what gets a teacher identified-the interest of the teachers who were identified. Mr. BELL. I would like to ask a question right here, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Eichberg, what do you think would be-would you have anything to suggest in the way of attacking this from a school or an educational standpoint? Mr. EICHBERG. Yes, right. Mr. BELL. I assume you agree with what we are trying to do. Mr. EICHBERG. That is what I am saying. I think some kind of an opening up of the problem to the point where this is not something where we say, "Drugs are bad, and don't take drugs," but we start dealing with the kind of problems that people are having in growing up-right through the school system. And I think that the focus doesn't necessarily have to be on drug education in order to eliminate or considerably cut down drug abuse, because it is my feeling that if the kids are able to constantly examine things, examine values, examine the adults' values in an atmosphere where the teachers aren't threatened by this, then the kids won't have to do these things which are destructive-whether or not it's the drugs that are being used now. What alarms me, is the amount of amphetamines and barbituates particularly at junior high school and grammar school level-where there is a problem in education. A lot of those kids don't know what they are getting, they are taking a little pill. I have seen a lot of overdose cases from that. So as I understand it, you would have to have maybe a separate classroom in which kids could come in and take the weight off their shoulders-one of the suggestions that came out of the Van Nuys group, by the principal--well, of course, then the money got cut, and that put the damper on that. Another possibility is that they could reinstitute "homeroom." She said when she started as a principal, the concept of the homeroom was a place where you could discuss what was going on; where you met with people-you had a 3-year relationship at the junior high school level with the same teacher and the same kids, and could be a little more open. you She would like to see that reinstituted in her school, like on a half hour a day basis. Then I was working out there during the time that there were all these funding problems with the school, and she got kind of discouraged. Right now, what we are trying to do out there is start a program where there are six teachers interested with kids, meeting with groups at the school. The principal wants us to go into all of the grammar schools that feed in there, because it is her feeling that the problem goes from the seventh grade up, because she feels that fifth and sixth graders are getting ready to go to junior high school, and being afraid of what it is like. Like when I went to junior high, I was afraid I was going to get beat up, and these kids feel they are going to be put down if they don't use drugs, and the problem is starting at lower and lower ages. She wants to have us try to start programs for all of the elementary schools in the community, and also in the high school. So that is our first attempt at a full community approach. Mr. HAWKINS. Let Mr. Burton go first. Mr. BURTON. You indicated that if the drug discussions told it the way it was, they might be more fruitful. The question I pose of you, then, is: Would you think it would be productive if the pro and con of the usage of Mr. EICHBERG. Yes. I am not sure you will ever lick the marihuana problem. I am not sure whether that is going to go in the society, and I am not sure what the real facts on that are. But I think definitely an open forum type of thing—a debate kind of thing. One of the things that Jordan used helped in his class. He had a debate, pro and con, on drug use. All the kids who were using drugs got on the side against using drugs-just as a kind of a challenge to themselves. And that's when they first started examining some of their own values. I don't think that drug education is something that can be done one time, or that you have films to do it, or that you have a teacher in a health class to teach it as a unit-a week on drug abuse. I don't think that's the way to handle it. I think it has to be something which is much more longlasting, involved, intense type of thing, and focussing on things other than the use of drugs. Mr. BURTON. There is really quite a difference between this kind of group therapy approach and the debate approach, where you have quite an experience gap, and I gather you are saying that you think this debate approach is as useful Mr. EICHBERG. As the group therapy? Mr. EICHBERG. I think that it is a valuable thing to use within the school system, but I don't think any one thing is going to do it. You may be reaching kids at very different points in their development. To teach a kid about drugs when he is nowhere near using themwhenever that comes-I mean for some kids, that may be eight. The average age might be higher. If you approach them at a point where they are not questioning it, where they are not involved in it already, it may mean nothing. Particularly if you approach them when they are first getting involved, it means nothing. Maybe after they are too deeply involved in it? It's an ongoing thing. You are bound to reach the person at one level of his development, and whether that's his predrug or whether you consider that because you reach him at a certain level he will never get involved with drugs. I think a realistic discussion Mr. BURTON. Just to put this in a relief that I would understand, would you similarly encourage debate of-or the wisdom of-homicide? Mr. EICHBERG. Homicide exists. I think it should be open to discussion throughout the whole school system. Suicide exists. I think it should be open to discussion in the school system. Intercourse exists. I think it should be open to discussion in the school system that may be too radical, I don't know. But these are all things that kids are dealing with. To say they are not is an absurdity. And I think that is one of the reasons you have kids so dissatisfied with what is happening at school; it is not dealing with what is happening in their lives. And I have no intention of junking education or junking schools. I think it's fantastic or I certainly wouldn't be in it. But I think you have to have some kind of open discourse on what's going on in reality. I was lucky, I had parents to do that with. Some people aren't, you know, aren't that fortunate. Some people don't have other friends to discuss it with. And I think the society has an obligation to provide some way of at least having a format for open discussion. And that is basically the kind of thing that I would like to see generally in the schools. Mr. MEEDS. Sandy, go ahead. Miss GOLVIN. Before, when the officer was talking, he said that from the age of-like from the age when the kids get into junior high school until when they are 17, they are sort of unreachable. We did a program that was involved in a junior high school where we took a group of kids, I mean they broke up into groups—I was with a group of kids, and we all sat down, and nobody knew what was going on. I didn't know what to do. They didn't know what to do. Well, we all the guys were sitting together, and the girls were sitting together, OK, everybody hold hands, you know. And everybody was totally uptight. The guys were really just blowing it, because they all had to hold hands and we held hands, like, for 2 minutes, and then we dropped hands. We talked about how we felt about it, and we got into the whole homosexual thing, you know, how it was acceptable for girls to hold hands, but not for guys, and we just got into it. These are the sort of things that are really hassling those kids. They are really hassling everybody, you know, and we got into that, and they were so excited. You know, it was the first time that we had ever been able to talk about those kinds of fears and those kinds of things, you know. They found out that the guy next to them had the same exact reaction he had, you know. And so I think it's not fair to say, "Well, these kids are not reachable," because if you do it right, I mean, everybody-everybody wants to talk about themselves, you know. Mr. MEEDS. Mr. Hawkins? Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Eichberg, I wasn't so clear as to whether or not you said that this program, or a program such as DAWN, can be carried out in the school system. Are you saying that it can, or it can't? Mr. EICHBERG. I am saying that it can. I think it is going to take a lot of work and a lot of time to have a-I am saying the atmosphere can be created within the school system. And varying levels of this kind of program can be used as a referral from the school system that the school is sponsoring. We have had a lot of trouble with school principals who have resisted DAWN being on campus, principals who have resisted it even being in the area, because it was a threat to them. You see, all these kids were having drug problems, you know. One woman out at the school in Fullerton called me-the counselor therewho was very upset. She found a girl in the bathroom unconscious. The girl was on barbiturates. She took the girl to the school nurse. The normal-and this is a counselor who had been trying to start some kind of group counseling sessions there the normal school procedure is to have the nurse call the parent and the police. This teacher wanted to work with the girl. She didn't feel that this was a police call. This was a good student, she had not been in any trouble at all before. She couldn't do that. In fact, when she put up a fight with the principal, she was threatened with losing her job. She called me. How can I possibly start a program at that school, when the principal thinks I'm a radical? This is the kind of thing that we are up against. A lot of people who are willing to do this thing with kids are getting told by their principal that they can't do it. One of the other proposals I wanted to make in terms of something that Jordan and Caldwell had suggested at University High Schoolis that rather than having to follow the normal school procedure, that the first time the kid is caught with drugs he is arrested and his parents are notified-that he be able to use his own discretion. He has the choice of either having them notified and being arrested and going through the juvenile procedure, or going to a 3-hour group session-or 2-hour group session-that hasn't been worked out just yet to discuss, "What are you doing with yourself?" These would be conducted after school. Then if he feels there is something to that-which we kind of hope they will feel he can be referred to an appropriate agency either DAWN or various other agencies in the couseling center-family counseling or he can just call it quits right there, and he can go back into whatever he was doing. If he gets busted again, he doesn't have that choice. He will have to go through the same procedure that they have been going through up to that time. At least this gives kids a chance to talk about their problem without the kids having to face a whole lot of other problems in going to a jail and being busted, of having his parents upset with him. It gives you a little more flexibility, and I say that is a very viable first step. Often the parents don't want to admit that their kids are using drugs. That's the kind of thing that I think really needs education on drugs. When you mention drugs, everybody goes, "Oh, no. Not my kid. Not my family." You mention cigarettes, which a lot of parents don't want their kids doing either, but there is some kind of a discussion on that. You don't find as many parents acting with tremendous alarm. So the kind of education that I see as having to get done is the opening up of the area as one that is discussable; one that you can communicate on-communicate reasonably on. I think that has to be taken through all aspects of the community, and the school. The reason I think the school is the best way to go is because that is where all the kids are found; all the parents are in some way involved, you have teachers who have access to kids, even when some parents don't. Mr. HAWKINS. Do you have the flexibility that seems to be the essence of what the testimony is about--to discuss problems that parents aren't going to allow to be discussed in the school setting, and the school board isn't going to approve? Can you believe that parents are going to have discussions of homosexuals; of boys holding hands? Mr. EICHBERG. Let me say this: I have found they are not. I think this is one of the things that possibly, if the committee like this can recognize that this is the way to go, this can be supported-or principals who all feel Mr. HAWKINS. I am not so sure we can convince our colleagues in Washington. Mr. EICHBERG. Maybe not. My interest is in telling this group about it. If you don't buy it, or they don't buy it-you know. But we have done so many programs where we have been before a PTA, where they normally expect, like, you know, you find people at a PTA meeting, and 300-that's how Van Nuys got started, 300 people showed upand that affects a lot of kids. And the responses were so good that we were invited back and back and back. We found that there were always people who were resistant to it, and we found that these were often the people who had the biggest problems in their own homes. But there are other people who are for, and if we reach all those who aren't resistant to it, then you are working in a Mr. HAWKINS. How is DAWN financed now? Mr. EICHBERG. We had a grant for our first 2 years from the Rosenberg Foundation. That does not nearly meet our bills at the moment. |