1st Edition

The Educator's Guide To Substance Abuse Prevention

By Sanford Weinstein Copyright 1999

    The Educator's Guide to Substance Abuse Prevention is for educators and other school personnel who are concerned about student drug use and school violence. It will help them to appreciate and use their humanity, professional skills, educational ideals, and the school curriculum as tools for substance abuse prevention. Teachers' concerns are addressed in several ways. First, the text provides a guide through which they may resolve personal and professional concerns about the commitments, limits, and boundaries of their working relationships with students. Second, it describes tasks that teachers can perform and mental health issues they can address in creating classroom policies, procedures, and rules to promote healthful learning activity in the classroom. Third, the author summarizes and interprets research and theory about substance abuse as they apply specifically to educational prevention and to professional teaching practice--arguing that classroom management strategies, learning activities, and social interaction are a teacher's primary tools of prevention, and showing how teachers may use these tools in any curricular area and without direct reference to drugs.

    A highlight of this text is its emphasis on helping teachers to explore drug-related issues from within the context of their own curricular specialties and to integrate substance abuse prevention with the curriculum in many school subjects--including the arts, literature, social studies, history, government, science, and culture. Action-oriented prevention strategies based on these content areas are suggested. The Educator's Guide to Substance Abuse Prevention:
    *focuses primarily on teaching, learning, and prevention rather than on information about drugs;
    *helps teachers to better use what they already do, know, and are in order to respond competently, responsibly, and with sensitivity to the needs of their students;
    *attends to the needs of teachers who do prevention work and the needs of children who are the target of prevention efforts;
    *describes student disappointment and disillusionment with family, school, and community as sources of risk and the legitimate domain in which teachers may serve a curative role;
    *provides extensive coverage of historical, social, and cultural issues related to substance abuse and school violence; and
    *alerts teachers to the risk to children posed by extremist adult groups, prominent negative role models, popular culture, and peer pressure.

    Contents: Preface. Introduction. Part I: Substance Abuse Prevention and Drug Education: Professional Issues and Concerns of Teachers. Teachers as Agents of Substance Abuse Prevention. Helping At-Risk Children in the Classroom: The Teacher as Surrogate Parent. School Violence and Substance Abuse Prevention. Part II: Theory and Practice in Drug Education and Substance Abuse Prevention. Moral Admonition and Secular Propaganda: Failed Strategies in Substance Abuse Prevention. Current Thought About Substance Abuse Prevention. Social Influences on Drug Use. Part III: Drug Education and Substance Abuse Prevention in Curricular Contexts: Social Policy and Government. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Social Policy. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Social Disillusionment. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Distrust of Politicians and Antigovernment Attitudes. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Drug Policy. Part IV: Drug Education and Substance Abuse Prevention in Curricular Contexts: Art and Culture. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Art and Culture. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Popular Culture. Substance Abuse Prevention in the Context of Cross-Cultural and International Comparison.

    Biography

    Sanford Weinstein

    "Takes substance abuse education out of the exclusive domain of the drug educator or health professor and brings it into the realm of the total curriculum. I applaud the perspective that drug education needs to be addressed in all subject areas as a part of a teacher's responsibility to be receptive to the needs of all students....I also like the honest confrontation of the effectiveness of current drug education programs in the schools. This book is unique in pointing out the weaknesses of the traditional substance abuse education program and the compromising role the critical thinking teacher finds oneself in when teaching that curriculum."
    Peggy Ishler
    University of Northern Iowa