Well, I�ve gotten my youngest child through the DARE program. Congratulate me. This time was no easier than the last. If I ever have another kid (excuse me while I spit to ward off the evil eye), I�m pulling that kid from the program.

DARE has forced me to teach Day-Hay to lie to the nice police officer. I had really hoped that she would learn that lesson from her peers and leave me out of it. It�s enough to make me crave box o�wine.

Goodness knows, Day-Hay resisted my initial attempts to corrupt her. When assigned to write about a time when she or someone she knows was faced with peer pressure, she asked for help because she did not want to hurt anyone�s feelings or write about others. I suggested she write about when she was two and it was April Fool�s Day and she began wearing underwear because Kat and her friend L. were but she claimed not to remember. I suggested she make something up and pointed out that no one would know the difference but she ended up writing an essay with such obscure references to an actual event that she was dubbed uncooperative and given a bad grade. (As I recall, she got a C but she considers a C a bad grade�at least when she�s bothered to hand in the homework.)

I finally had her when she had to write an essay on �why DARE is a good program.� She knew that Kat had written a well-reasoned essay on the problems with DARE and how she would fix them. For Kat�s trouble, the nice police officer told her that she writes well but cannot stay on topic. Day-Hay likes to keep her head down so she eventually decided to write what the nice police officer wanted to hear. The result was what she calls her �fictitious real essay.�

Now that she�d learned to lie, I thought we were home free. Silly me! The officer liked the darn thing so much that she wanted Day-Hay to read it to the class. Day-Hay hates making oral presentations she believes in. I didn�t think she could do this one. I talked to her science teacher and made it clear that Day-Hay would be sick the day she had to read it to class if something weren�t done. Even the science teacher didn�t want to cross the nice police officer. She maneuvered things so Day-Hay was last and, gosh darn, they just ran out of time.

DARE invades privacy, fails to teach about such common drug problems as inhalants, is expensive, and has research behind it that suggests that, for middle-class kids such as mine, it may make drug abuse more likely. All this-- and learning to lie to the nice police officer too. What�s not to like about DARE?

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