Alcohol in Schools

I was yet again asked a question this week which yet again I find very difficult to justify my answer to. Why difficult, well put simply I have an answer but it still doesn't justify why schools don't do the blindingly obvious!

Why do we not teach kids about alcohol? They teach them about drugs don't they?

Firstly we have to look at the system. Teachers train to teach a subject with a reserve subject. They do this for years and they specialise in that subject. This is a good thing for the academic subjects and a bad one when it comes to life outside the academic plastic bubble. I call it this simply because we are protected inside it from all the nastier things in our lives.

Unfortunately when children go home at night they step outside the bubble and teachers who also step outside the bubble cannot rely on their experiences there to be brought back to the children. Why? Well it would indicate teachers are human and by definition not perfect. My best teachers were without a shadow of a doubt the ones who combined the two together well.

Back to the system. Under the Blair Government there was an extension of Thatcherite ideas regarding how things should be taught. In many ways it was almost a retrograde to the Victorian Times when teaching was about propaganda. Gone were the free thinkers of the 1950's and 60's who had interestingly shaped the thoughts of the Thatchers and the Blairs, it was back to by the book by the numbers.

So let us introduce the great Tony Blair document: The National Alcohol Strategy. Hundreds of pages written by pseudo experts who had hardly ever stepped outside their own plastic bubble or should I say University Office. And the amusing thing? Well they can't even do basic mathematics which all things considered is quite worrying bearing in mind they are telling us to count and limit our units.

This document was supposed to be the basis by which alcohol teaching took place in the UK. And there lies the obvious problem.

Getting untrained teachers to teach from this text book full of basic wrongs is about as sensible as getting US Intelligence to go searching for Osama Bin Laden!

Or in other words paying lip service to the problem with a bit of good spin and the problem will disappear.

Well it hasn't and we need to do something about it now.

We need serious people, experienced people who will come into schools and teach our children the truth.

I volunteer. I'm happy to do it, for free.

Bet you though not many schools will take me up on the offer. Why not? Because I don't preach from the Bible. I don't sit in an Ivory Tower and I don't wear a Police Badge and therefor how can I be right?

Well I have studied this subject for 33 years, more than most academics, certainly more than any Police Officer, and probably more than most executives in the Drinks Industry.

And the worrying thing for one side is that I don't say drink is all bad so I can't be the right person to teach young people.

Wrong! With my own personal experiences of how crippling alcohol can be if misused, my vast experience at working with individuals and groups who have sought knowledge and my vehement desire to eradicate half truths and mis-truths I am the perfect person.

I wonder if they have the courage or like the present incumbents of Westminster they would prefer to put their head in the sands!