This article was published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education.

Please cite as:

Tupper, K.W. (2008). Teaching teachers to just say “know”: Reflections on drug
education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(2), 356-367.

Teaching Teachers to Just Say ―Know‖:

Reflections on Drug Education

Kenneth W. Tupper
Ph.D. student
Department of Educational Studies
University of British Columbia
www.kentupper.com

Abstract

Psychoactive substance use by students is common in many countries, obliging schools to

deliver drug education. However, some jurisdictions do not prepare teachers for engaging
their students in honest, knowledge-based education. This article looks at the history and
queries the purposes of contemporary drug education. It compares current approaches to
drug education with those of other ―vice‖ issues addressed in the history of public
schools, such as sex education and temperance education. It critically challenges the
question of knowledge definition and production related to psychoactive substances.
Finally, some of the theoretical groundings on which to base teacher education for drug
education are considered.

Keywords

Drug education; Prevention; Drug use; Harm reduction; Teacher education

[p. 356] Introduction

Psychoactive substance use has been a perennial aspect of human cultural behaviour and
seems unlikely to stop in the foreseeable future. Almost all human cultures since pre-
historic times have engaged in non-medical drug use to stimulate, sedate or elate
(Escohotado, 1999). It is open to question, then, whether societies and governments
should be fixated on how to extirpate drugs from human cultures and eradicate them from
the earth1, or whether we should learn (and teach) how to live with drugs in such a way as
to maximize their benefits and minimize their harms. The policy goal of harm reduction
thus challenges not only the health, criminal justice and social service systems, but also
the education system, schools, and teachers.

This paper addresses the question of how teachers might best be prepared for doing drug
education at a time when the wisdom of drug prohibition is being questioned at
international policy tables, when innovative drug policy directions—such as harm
reduction—diverge from the traditional abstinence-at-all-costs focus, and when a greater
variety of illegal drugs are cheaper and more easily available to young people than ever
before. It begins with a brief history of drug education and compares this with another
―vice‖ issue in schools, sex education. It then turns to the question of what aims and
purposes are realistic for drug education, exploring [p. 357] the conceptual distinction
between education and prevention. This leads to a discussion of knowledge about drugs
and issues relating to its formal production. Finally, it considers some of the theoretical
options for what pre-service programmes can offer student teachers to assist them in
anticipating the challenges they will face in addressing drug use and some of its
associated problems in schools and classrooms.

The Challenges of “Vice” Education: Sex, Drugs and Progressivism

The public school has since its mid-19th century inception been contested terrain in
struggles over how to address ―vice‖ issues such as psychoactive substance use and
sexuality. Debates about how teachers should address these topics take on emotionally-
and morally-charged dimensions that are bound up in firmly held beliefs about childhood,
the body, pleasure and autonomy. The current tension between abstinence and harm
reduction as goals for drug education has parallels with the histories of both sex
education and alcohol education. A consideration of past trends in sex and alcohol
education illuminates the dilemmas facing teachers tasked with drug education and the
underlying challenges inherent in the legacy of progressivism.

As with drug education, sex education was spawned through a coupling of public health
with moral regulation, particularly 19th century concerns with physical and social hygiene
(Sethna, 2004). The social construct of ―adolescence‖ was a central concept in the
advancement of sex education in schools in the 20th century (Moran, 2000), as it was with
drug education. An early tension identified in sex education was the intuitive appeal of

1
United Nations—Press Release SG/SM/6586 GA/9412, June 8th, 1998—from the General Assembly 20th
Special Session, Secretary-General Kofi Annan: ―It is time for every nation to say ‗no‘ to drugs. It is time
for all nations to say ‗yes‘ to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world‖
(http://www.un.org/ga/20special/presrel/sgsm6586.htm).
attempting to scare youth into abstinence (at least until marriage) through exaggerated
and lurid descriptions of potential consequences of sexual behaviours (e.g. contraction of
venereal diseases or purported harms of masturbation) and the need to acknowledge that
sexuality could be a healthy and pleasurable part of adult life. Although it was known in
the medical community that prophylaxis—such as condom use and post-coital hygiene
practices—could mitigate the risk for venereal diseases, such information was not
communicated to the general youth population (Moran, 2000). The analogy with harm
reduction and drug education is apparent, as silence about pleasure and how to minimize
risks from drug use may be motivated by a fear of sending the wrong (i.e. pro-drug)
message (Beck, 1998; Moore, in press).

The challenges facing those tasked with educating about intrinsically pleasurable
activities such as sex or psychoactive substance use may in part arise from the legacy of
progressivism in public schooling. Although progressivism may not be explicitly
identified as such in today‘s teacher education programmes, it remains a strong
theoretical undercurrent in public schooling with roots in early 19th romanticism and the
pedagogical and psychological theories of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, John Dewey
and Jean Piaget (Egan, 2002; Reese, 2001). Progressivism emphasizes learning in
accordance with ―natural‖ developmental principles and teaching through activities that
engage students in real-world experiences. For progressivism, knowledge gained by
―doing‖ rather than ―learning‖ is esteemed as more memorable, rewarding and valuable.
However, the inductive progressivist approach poses a dilemma for education about
sexuality and drugs. On the one hand, progressivist principles demand engaging students
in first-hand experiences with the subject; on the other, providing such experiences with
sex or drugs is regarded as morally reprehensible. Thus, teachers charged with delivering
didactic lessons about sex or drugs may find this task at odds with the underlying
philosophy guiding most else of what they do.

Sex education remains a contested pedagogical domain, especially in jurisdictions with

strong conservative religious communities (Irvine, 2004); however, it has seen some
considerable evolution over past century (Lewis & Knijn, 2002; Pilcher, 2005). Today,
the secular pedagogical approach taken towards sexuality is one of disseminating sound
scientific information in an interactive and dialogic manner with sensitive and credible
facilitators. Academic research generating knowledge in the field today is less bound by
the ideological constraints emphasizing abstinence-at-all-costs and rigid heterosexual
normativities that directed it in past eras. Curiosity, honesty and inquiry in classrooms are
encouraged without an undercurrent of hypocritical value judgements, and abstinence is
promoted as a safe and healthy option without being imposed as a norm from which any
deviance is deemed sociopathic or ruinous. Rather, educators assume that students either
already are sexually active, or will be engaging in some type of sexual behaviour at some
point in the future. Both rights [p. 358] and responsibilities pursuant to sexual behaviours
are emphasized, and students are taught how to protect themselves from harms that can
sometimes result from sexual activity. However, these changes in sex education in the
20th century have not been matched in another ―vice‖ educational domain, drug
education, as a brief look at its history reveals.
Contemporary drug education traces back to the late 19th century, when temperance
groups such as the Women‘s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) began to see the
nascent institution of public schooling as a vehicle for furthering their anti-alcohol cause.
At the time, the purported effects of alcohol consumption, its legality, and women‘s
suffrage were issues conflated by social activists and moral entrepreneurs, who blamed
drinking for many contemporary problems, including the exclusion of women from
political life (Paulson, 1973). Although alcohol use was the primary focus of the
WCTU‘s attention, they also condemned tobacco, opium and other drug use and
advocated abstinence from all mind-altering substances (with the possible exception of
caffeine, which is not mentioned in their literature) (Women‘s Christian Temperance
Union, n.d.). As part of its activities, the WCTU prepared and endorsed classroom
resource materials under the name ―Scientific Temperance Instruction,‖ which had
considerable implementation success throughout North America (Zimmerman, 1999). In
Canada, ―by the turn of the century most provinces had some form of temperance
teaching in schools‖ (Sheehan, 1984, p. 103). However, the Scientific Temperance
Instruction movement failed to sustain itself and its use in schools had gradually tapered
off by the 1920s (Mezvinsky, 1961). Alcohol prohibition also had some success in a
number of jurisdictions, but it too eventually lost public and political support.

The decline of Scientific Temperance Instruction did not end the moral-based social
engineering efforts made in the name of drug education. In 1926, the U.S. hosted a World
Conference on Narcotic Education, which brought together international experts to
discuss how best to promulgate intolerance for drug use and an ethic of abstinence in
response to what was regarded as a burgeoning crisis of drug addiction and crime
(Middlemiss, 1926). The 1930s saw an increased uptake of the medium of cinema to
communicate to a mass audience the purported evils of drugs such as marijuana and
cocaine (Schaefer, 1999). The 1950s and early 1960s were a period of relatively little
education about any drugs other than alcohol (and to some extent tobacco) (Wepner,
1984), but the WCTU‘s legacy continued to influence alcohol education through the mid-
20th century. Zimmerman (2002) notes that what alcohol education was done in the U.S.
in the early 1960s came almost exclusively from a teetotalist perspective.

However, the total abstinence approach to alcohol education faced a significant challenge
as support grew for the disease model of alcoholism. The implication of the disease
model was that only some few individuals were at risk for addiction, that most people
could use alcohol safely and moderately (Gusfield, 1996). Educators committed to
scientifically-informed practices embraced this new understanding. And certainly some
corporations, who actively sought to increase profits by promoting consumption of drugs
such as alcohol (not to mention tobacco and a cornucopia of psychoactive
pharmaceuticals), did not object to this tack being adopted in educational efforts (Holder
& Edwards, 1995; Pennock, 2007). As with sex education, the field of alcohol education
was thus divided between those who supported change based on health science
innovations and those who remained committed to conservative moral codes.

With the rise in illegal drug use among young people that occurred in most developed
countries in the 1960s, the perceived need to scare young people away from
experimentation with these substances again became a prominent issue for education.
However, changing attitudes about drugs—including increased cross-cultural and
historical awareness of human drug use and postmodern sensibilities of tolerance—made
it more difficult to uphold the arbitrary distinction between alcohol and ―drugs,‖ defined
more through past legal and policy contingencies than through scientific or public health
considerations. As Courtwright (2005) observes, in the 20th century, ―in both western
medicine and in western popular culture, alcohol and tobacco effectively split off from
other drugs, to the point that the ordinary understanding of the word ‗drugs‘ came to
exclude, rather than include, these substances‖ (p. 110). The place of alcohol in today‘s
drug education programs is somewhat ambiguous, as conventional social mores dictate
that, despite its toxicity and liability to inebriate, it can be used safely and responsibly by
adults. The question of whether this logic may extend to some or all currently illegal
substances is a significant dilemma for contemporary drug education. [p. 359]

Various prevention programmes and public awareness campaigns have been developed
by legions of researchers in the past few decades, yet none has shown to have any
exceptional success at achieving the stated goals of reducing prevalence of drug use
among adolescents (Caulkins et al., 1999; Cohen, 1996; Gandhi, et al., 2007; Hawthorne,
2001). As Room (2000) puts it, with regard to alcohol and drug education, ―popular
approaches are ineffective, effective approaches are politically impossible‖ (n.p.). In
many developed countries, trends in illegal drug use among students are steady or
increasing (Hibell, et al., 2004). In the United States, illegal drugs are widely available
and used in schools (National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 2007), and
slight decreases in self-reported illegal drug use by teens in recent years have been
contemporaneous with increases in the non-medical use of potent pharmaceutical
psychoactive substances (Johnston, O‘Malley, Bachman & Schulenberg, 2007;
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 2006).

Despite evidence of the ineffectiveness of such simplistic admonitions as ―just say no,‖
the quest for abstinence continues to dominate agendas in drug education and school-
based drug use prevention. In some jurisdictions, this has led to such practices as
regularly searching schools with drug-sniffing police dogs (Gottfredson & Gottfredson,
2001), urine testing students to detect the use of illegal drugs (Roberts & Fossey, 2002),
uncritically perpetuating drug war ideology in learning resources (Tupper, in press), and
denying students the right to talk about alternatives to bellicose drug policy orthodoxy
(Friesen, 2007). However, such extreme forms of social control in public schools are
pedagogically and ethically questionable, raising the question of what lengths
governments may go to in their quests for ―drug-free‖ societies. Liberal democratic states
were founded on principles of liberty, autonomy, and freedom of speech, basic notions of
freedom that are flourishing in political rhetoric but sometimes seem to be floundering in
constitutional and educational practice (Chomsky, 2003). Accordingly, some have
suggested that a more appropriate goal for drug education is to achieve a reduction in
harms from use instead of focussing solely on abstinence (Brown & Horowitz, 1993;
Midford, McBride & Munro, 1998; Poulin & Nicholson, 2005; Rosenbaum, 2002).
Purpose and Aims of Drug Education
Why drug education should be in the curriculum at all is a fundamental question.
Psychoactive substance use is a reality in contemporary modern society, and this fact
cannot be ignored or wished away. Despite a century of prohibition and decades of an
escalating war on (some) drugs, schools remain a primary retail distribution point for
illegal drugs in many countries (Lowry, et al., 1999; Devoe, et al., 2003). Furthermore,
young people in contemporary Western societies are exposed to a wide variety of explicit
and implicit marketing efforts promoting indulgence gratification and the consumption of
ostensibly pleasure-inducing material goods—including substances that alter mood,
consciousness or behaviour, such as tobacco, alcohol, caffeine and sugar (Eckersley,
2005; Taylor, 2000). And since at least the 1960s, some youth subcultures have resisted
parental and government authority on drugs and celebrated the consumption of illegal
substances such as cannabis and ecstasy (Blackman, 2004; Golub, Johnson & Dunlap,
2005). Since governments derive considerable fiscal benefits from the taxation of legal
psychoactive commodities, one might suppose they have at least a fiduciary
responsibility to educate young people—in a credible and honest way—about the risks
and benefits of psychoactive substance use. To not do drug education would seem a
dereliction of responsibility by governments with an interest in public health and welfare.

What forms drug education should take and what outcomes should be demanded of it,
however, are a matter of considerable debate. Is drug education to prevent any and all use
of psychoactive substances per se? Or is it to inculcate an ethic of moderation and safety?
Is it to provide young people with knowledge of historical and cross-cultural uses of
drugs? To what extent is there a political dimension to drug education—for example,
reinforcing or challenging the assumptions upon which current drug policies and laws are
based? Are the public and politicians, who may ―look at schools as instruments for
dealing with the ills of society‖ (Bietsa & Miedema, 2002, p. 176), obliging schools to
become de facto therapeutic institutions to ameliorate problems in part generated, or at
least exacerbated, by other government policies or social trends? (see also Tyack, 1979).

The question of aims of drug education leads to a corollary question about the conceptual
difference [p. 360] between ―prevention‖ and education. Although often used
interchangeably, these terms do not denote the same things. ―Prevention‖ is steeped in the
ideology of social control and public health, borrowing terminology from the field of
communicable disease prevention. The discourse of prevention carries an implicit
assumption about the pathogenic nature of psychoactive substances, casting youth as ―at-
risk‖ and potential victims of disease. Examples include terms such as ―etiology‖ of drug
use, ―primary‖ and ―secondary‖ prevention, ―inoculating‖ children against drug use,
providing ―booster‖ programmes as they mature, and ―treatment‖ for those who choose
other than to just say no. Prevention has been cited as failing to embrace complexity and
the notions of cultures or contexts of drug use (Blackman, 2004; Duff, 2003). And
despite the authoritative messages of prevention, seldom is there a clear articulation of
what exactly is hoped to be prevented. Is it all use per se, or merely the subset of use that
constitutes ―abuse‖? Unfortunately, ―use‖ and ―abuse‖ (or its euphemistic alternative,
―misuse‖) are often used synonymously and without distinction, especially with respect
to illegal drugs. For the rest of this article, when appropriate, the term ―(ab)use‖ is used to
denote a purposeful ambiguity.

The degree of contrast between prevention and education depends on how one construes
the educational project, an endeavour that has been interpreted as having varying aims
and purposes in different places and times. Egan (1997) identifies three major aims of
education at the foundation of modern Western schooling, each of which is incompatible
with the others. In one respect, schools attempts to homogenize young people by
socializing them into the norms and conventions of society, producing citizens who fulfill
cultural expectations and unquestioningly perpetuate these central values. At the same
time, school curricula still follow a Platonic programme of seeking truth and finding a
rational and privileged view of reality. Finally, schools follow Rousseau‘s programme
(translated in modern education to progressivism and Piaget‘s developmentalism) of
allowing young people to develop their individual potentials according to natural
processes of psychological growth. Beyond what Egan (1997) identifies, schools are
increasingly tasked with other ends, including the instrumentalist project of improving
public health, of which preventing youth drug (ab)use among is a part (Hagquist &
Starrin, 1997). This further complicates education and adds another tension to the mix of
aims that may work at cross purposes.

The values of liberal democratic societies are enshrined in political institutions and
agendas, including those of education. As Apple (2004) notes, ―the structuring of
knowledge and symbol in our educational institutions is intimately related to the
principles of social and cultural control in a society‖ (p. 2). Apple‘s observation is made
in a critical vein, to draw attention to the political and economic forces at work in what
forms of knowledge and power are reproduced through the hegemonies inherent in
contemporary schooling. However, the concept of control evokes one of the most
cherished and fundamental value in liberal democratic societies—often formally
articulated in national constitutions—that of freedom. In this light, then, education may
also be seen as a project of freedom, choice and informed decision-making, especially
when contrasted with the concept of indoctrination.

A recent example of schools attempting to repress unorthodox thoughts about drugs is the
case of a tenth-grade student in Saskatchewan, Canada, who was suspended for
disobeying a student lockdown after he fomented a protest against being told not to
discuss the merits of cannabis prohibition at school (Friesen, 2007). The student claimed
he had never seen, let alone used marijuana, but was deemed to have been ―promoting‖
drug use by speaking about his research into the relative harms of different drugs and
drug policies; he had concluded that alcohol was more detrimental to physical and social
health than cannabis and that cannabis prohibition was more harmful than the substance
itself. Rather than taking an educational opportunity to engage students in an important
social question and encouraging critical thinking, administrators chose, presumably in the
name of prevention, to muzzle the student instead. Such actions appear to ignore the
educational premise that pre-determined behavioural or belief outcomes about contested
social issues cannot simply be decreed. Rather, in the democratic educational project,
teachers and students share (or co-construct) knowledge, engage in honest, meaningful
dialogue, critically evaluate options, and work to foster an ability to anticipate and
analyze possible consequences of different actions.

The distinction between drug education and drug (ab)use prevention is further elucidated
by the notion of ―technical rationality.‖ Schön (1983) describes technical rationality as a
model of professional [p. 361] activity that ―consists in instrumental problem solving
made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique‖ (p. 21). In education,
technical rationality is a utilitarian approach that emphasizes rational, scientific means to
achieving extrinsic educational goals such as measurable targets set by the state. Drug
(ab)use prevention is dominated by technical rationality. As Blackman (2004) notes, the
guiding frame of prevention ―results in drug education being understood not as a process
but as an outcome: successful drug education is thus measured by predefined
performance targets of behavioural change‖ (p. 158). Success for prevention is quantified
by prevalence statistics, such as decreases in the percentage of students who report
lifetime or past year substance use, or increases in those who report perceived danger in
illegal drug use. Yet, as Winter (2000) observes, ―[s]uch extrinsic ends are predetermined
and may be seen as outputs or targets which . . . overlook education as being ridden with
strongly contextualized moral and political issues‖ (p. 155). The instrumentality and
technical rationalism of prevention do not account for other factors—such as the amount
of a substance used, the cultural, social, or other contexts of use, the harms (or lack
thereof) of use—that acknowledge the complexity of drug use issues and can be admitted
in education.

Knowledge in Drug Education

Even when drug education is distinguished from the more instrumental concept of
prevention, there remains the related philosophical issue of how knowledge about drugs
is produced, constructed and organized. Education may involve many things—emotional
growth, socialization, self-actualization, skill development—but perhaps most
fundamentally it is about knowledge (Whitehead, 1929). Indeed, Shulman (2004) cites
content knowledge as the most primary of the sources for the teaching knowledge base:
―teaching necessarily begins with a teacher‘s understanding of what is to be learned‖ (p.
227). In Canada, the British Columbia College of Teachers‘ Standards for the Education,
Competence and Professional Conduct of Educators in British Columbia (2004) and the
British Columbia Ministry of Education‘s Planning 10 Integrated Resource Package
(2004)—the province‘s drug education curriculum—both identify ―knowledge‖ as
intrinsic to teachers‘ professionalism and to students‘ prescribed learning outcomes.
Likewise, in Great Britain, the Office for Standards in Education (2005) identifies the
criterion of ―an appropriate level of knowledge about drug education‖ (p. 16) first on its
list of what constitutes ―good‖ drug education. Knowledge is understood to be integral to
education, including drug education.

Yet we cannot simply accept knowledge as unproblematic. Indeed, as Britzman (1991)

observes, ―[t]o counter the dominant view of knowledge as neutral and capable of
‗speaking for itself,‘ knowledge must be approached as problematic in its social
construction, and the problem of representation, interpretation, and meaning—that is, the
question, how do we know what we know—must become a central theme in disciplinary
studies and in school classrooms‖ (p. 43). Knowledge cannot be taken as something
objective or given; facts cannot be separated from values. This is especially pertinent
with respect to knowledge about illegal drugs, as prohibitionist drug policies constrain
what questions are conceived, asked and funded by researchers in the academy, the
traditional domain of authoritative knowledge production (Miller, Moore & Strang, 2006;
Nusbaumer & Reiling, 2007).

Danish criminologist Jorgen Jepsen perceptively notes that ―the war on drugs is also a
war against alternative definitions and descriptions of reality‖ (qtd. in Goldberg, 1999, p.
4). In academia, a refusal to adhere to precepts aligned with drug war orthodoxy in some
fields can mean professional isolation, less likelihood of publication in conservative peer-
reviewed journals, and rejection of research grant applications by major funding bodies
such as the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) or Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). However, some scientists and
researchers have begun to speak out about political influence on research agendas and
programmes involving illegal drugs (Grob, 2000; Laniel, 1999; Pearson, 2004; Thoumi,
2002). And the ideological impetus for control of knowledge goes beyond its mere
production. Reinarman (2005) documents some of the Orwellian directives of U.S.
government officials affecting librarians, professional organizers, preservers and
retrievers of text-based knowledge. These include calls to destroy ―outdated‖ documents
deemed inconsistent with current bellicose thinking about illegal drugs and NIDA
memoranda (or, perhaps more appropriately, diktats) on approved language about drugs
and drug use. The knowledge base for drug education in schools [p. 362] cannot help but
be constrained by the political circumstances of its production and dissemination. This
poses challenges that are highly relevant to discussions about preparing teachers for drug
education in schools.

The importance of U.S. policy in the production and dissemination of knowledge about
drug education and prevention internationally is considerable. Indeed, the U.S. assertion
of political influence in the domain of illegal drugs has for a number of decades been a
powerful constraint on a variety of policy and practice options for other countries. This
may take the form of overt (i.e. militaristic) pressure, but often it happens in more subtle
ways. Influence in channels of international relations (e.g. through bilateral trade
negotiations or, more formally, through such institutions as the United Nations‘ Office on
Drugs and Crime) is another way the U.S. may assert its drug policy hegemony (Fazey,
2003). With less economically affluent countries, it can happen through offers of
economic incentives or resources in the form of foreign aid. One good example of this is
the U.S. Agency for International Development‘s Narcotics Awareness and Education
Project, which provided training, technical assistance and financial support to drug
(ab)use prevention efforts in developing countries (Kirsch, 1995). Academic literature on
drug education is heavily dominated by U.S.-based research, which has been found to
comprise as much as 90% of the studies collected for an international systematic review
(White & Pitts, 1998). Teacher education programmes engaging in preparation for drug
education cannot ignore the broader context of the politicization of knowledge in this
field.
Teacher Education for Drug Education
The degree to which teachers need to be prepared to engage in drug education in schools
may vary among jurisdictions. In British Columbia, Canada, none of the major teacher
education institutions—the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and
the University of Victoria—includes drug education as a core component of its
curriculum, despite the fact that teachers may be mandated to deliver drug education as
part of their professional duties when they begin teaching. This situation is not unique:
Harris (1998) notes an almost identical problem for teacher education programs in the
United Kingdom, and Midford (2007) reports that in Australia, after a period of some
improved teacher training for drug education in the mid-1990s, the momentum for
professional development in this area has slowed in recent years.

It is little wonder that teachers willingly turn their classrooms over to other professionals
for assistance in delivering drug education. Law enforcement officers are often the ones
who step in fill the instructional gap, through such programmes as Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (D.A.R.E). Although shown to be ineffective at reducing drug
(ab)use (Lyman et al., 1999; West & O‘Neal, 2004), D.A.R.E. continues to be popular
among politicians, parents and teachers. However, police officers engaging in drug
education is akin to nuns doing sex education: the systemic values they represent cannot
help but undermine their authority and credibility. By not preparing professional teachers
to do drug education, teacher education programs put their graduates in a situation where
they are more likely to feel the need to abdicate their educational responsibilities and turn
over the delivery of drug education classes to police officers.

Assuming that university teacher education programmes were to see a need to incorporate
drug education as a core component of their curricula, how would they best do this? What
do teachers need to know and what experiences do they need to have in order to be
prepared to deliver drug education in classrooms? In this section, I explore how the
conceptualization of drug education as prevention might constrain the way teachers are
prepared for it. This discussion will consider the historical shifts Cochran-Smith and
Fries (2005) identify in the framing of the ―problem‖ of teacher education and how they
have happened with respect to drug education. Then I take up the question of teacher
preparation for drug education in relation to Shulman‘s (1986) discussion of content
knowledge and Schön‘s (1983) concept of reflective practice.

Cochran-Smith and Fries (2005) identify three major approaches to framing the issue of
teacher education: as a training problem (dominant from the late 1950s to the early
1980s), as a learning problem (dominant from the early 1980s to the early 2000s) and as a
policy problem (dominant in the past decade). With respect to drug education, however,
especially insofar as it is constituted through the paradigms of criminal justice, public
health and the discourses of ―prevention,‖ the problem of preparing teachers has in many
ways remained one of training. Yet, prevention programmes and research are often
conceived and [p. 363] delivered by health researchers, not educational researchers. As
Brown (2001) observes, ―If the number of research presentations addressing drug
education at the largest educational research support organization in the United States is
considered, there is an even smaller ratio of educational participation. Over a seven-year
period in the 1990s, of approximately 10,300 programme sessions presented at the
American Educational Research Association‘s (AERA) annual conference, 19 addressed
drug education.‖ (p. 87).

The importance of teacher training in the prevention project is put bluntly by McBride
(2003): ―To ensure that school-based implementers have adequate knowledge and skills,
and are comfortable delivering drug education programmes, a certain type and level of
training is required. Training should directly train the teacher involved with the
classroom delivery [italics original]‖ (p. 739) The construction of the teacher (drug)
education problem as one of training is also borne out in the concept of fidelity, defined
by Dusenbury et al. (2003) as ―the degree to which teachers . . . implement programs as
intended by the program developers‖ (p. 240). As Cuijpers (2003) describes, ―a major
concern in the dissemination of effective programmes is implementation fidelity. Many
teachers and other professionals working in daily practice are not easily convinced to
work with a standard protocol developed in research‖ (p. 15). Likewise, Ringwalt et al.
(2003) assert—in a research paper devoted to fidelity—that ―[a]dherence to curricula . . .
may be most important‖ (p. 376). A critical take on the concept of fidelity is that it is
tantamount to ―teacher-proofing‖ prevention programmes, demanding professional
educators instruct according to rigidly prescribed didacticism. It clearly shows the degree
to which teacher education is constructed as a training problem with respect to drug
education. Nevertheless, despite the drive to train teachers to deliver rigid programmes
with undeviating rigour, some researchers argue the promise of school-based prevention
has been overstated (Brown, D‘Emidio-Caston & Pollard, 1997; Caulkins et al., 1999;
Hawthorne, 2001; Room, 2000).

Although drug education qua prevention is still dominated by a technical rationality

model and is generally conceived of as a training problem, there has been some shift
towards regarding it as a policy problem. Perhaps because of dawning recognition that
little progress has been made towards achieving a drug-free world, drug education and
prevention have become targets for new policy initiatives that appear to be more broadly
systemic and use broader policy levers than in the past. One example of this is described
by Harris (2003), who reports that in the UK there has been increased willingness for new
collaborative governance structures among different agencies and branches of
government that address issue relating to youth drug use, including, of course, schools.
Similarly, prevention of drug (ab)use has been identified as one of the core concerns of
the Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health (JCSH), an organization
established in 2004 by education and health ministers from provinces across Canada,
whose stated mandate is to ―act as a catalyst in strengthening cooperation among
ministries, departments, agencies and others in building the capacity of health, education
and other systems to work together on . . . ongoing workforce development and pre-
service training‖ (Joint Consortium for School Health, n.d.). The move towards regarding
teacher education in the drug education field as a policy problem is thus happening in
several jurisdictions and is in step with the shift identified by Cochran-Smith and Fries
(2005), although without the intermediate phase of regarding teacher education as a
learning problem.
Treating teacher education as a learning problem is perhaps a missed opportunity for
effectively preparing new teachers to engage in drug education. Shulman‘s (1986)
theoretical framing of the importance of knowledge in teacher education is one way of
taking this approach. Shulman identifies three types of knowledge as important for
teachers: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge.
Content knowledge is ―the amount and organization of knowledge per se in the mind of
the teacher‖ (p. 9); pedagogical content knowledge is ―the particular form of content
knowledge that embodies the aspects of content germane to its teachability‖ (ibid.); and
curricular knowledge is the knowledge of ―the full range of programs designed for the
teaching of particular subjects and topics at a given level, the variety of instructional
materials available in relation to those programs, and the set of characteristics that serve
as both the indication and contraindication of the use of particular curriculum or program
materials in particular circumstances‖ (p. 10). Wilson, Shulman and [p. 364] Richert go
as far as to contend that knowledge of subject matter is the ―‗missing paradigm‘‖ (1987,
p. 108) in research into teacher education.

Shulman‘s (1986) argument for the importance of knowledge in teaching is impassioned,

reasoned and compelling. He makes a strong case that to do anything less than insist that
new teachers have a full grasp of content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and
curricular knowledge would be negligence in professional development. However, with
respect to drug education, putting such demands on novice teachers would be unrealistic.
Despite its arguable importance as a subject today‘s young people need awareness of in
order to develop and maintain their health and autonomy, drug education is not—nor
should it be—a core curricular subject. Thus, the kinds of knowledge Shulman outlines as
necessary for teachers are not amenable to being considered essential elements for
teacher education with respect to drug education (although they may be desiderata for the
teacher educators tasked with preparing student teachers in the subject). Furthermore, as
the above discussion about contested validities of knowledge in the politically-charged
realms of drugs and drug policy makes clear, the pragmatics of doing justice to the
subject within the limitations of teacher education programmes would be a challenge.
Rather, the time and workload demands on student teachers necessitate an approach to
professional preparation for drug education that is more focused on reflective practice.

Schön‘s (1983) notion of reflective practice in professional development deserves serious

consideration with respect to teacher education for drug education. As noted above,
Schön prefaces his discussion of the value of reflective practice with a critique of the
dominant approach to ―solving‖ social problems in the latter half of the 20th century, the
model of technical rationality, which is ―implicit in the institutionalized relations of
research and practice, and in the normative curricula of professional education‖ (1983, p.
26). Although Cochran-Smith and Fries (2005) observe that in the early 1980s there was
movement in teacher education away from the technical rationality model (which they
label as constructing teacher education as a training problem) towards learning and policy
foci, with respect to drug (ab)use prevention, the technical rationality model still
dominates. Indeed, the discourses of prevention are replete with references to
effectiveness, best practices, and the ―science‖ of prevention (Arthur & Blitz, 2000;
Hallfors & Godette, 2002).
The analysis Schön (1983) provides on the limitations of technical rationality, however,
belies the authoritative positivist rhetoric that dominates drug (ab)use prevention
literature. Elsewhere, Schön (1979) discusses the concept of ―generative metaphor‖ and
the analytical constraints imposed by embedded metaphors underlying the framing of
intractable social problems. With respect to drug use, the two dominant constructions of
the problem have been identified by Marlatt (1996) as a moral issue or as a disease issue.
The underlying metaphors for these two approaches construct drugs as malevolent agents
(casting users as sinful or bad and needing punishment) or as pathogens (casting users as
sick and needing treatment). These two generative metaphors are useful insofar as they
may facilitate concerted and consistent action to address the ―problem‖; however, they
are also inadequate inasmuch as they conceptually limit creative thinking about solutions.
The disease model of drug use, which dominates prevention discourses, especially lends
itself to approaching solutions through technical rationality. Yet the technical rationalist
model—as Schön (1983) puts it, ―instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the
application of scientific theory and technique‖ (p. 21)—has not produced results
commensurate with the passion and commitment of its champions. The technical
rationalist approach to drug (ab)use prevention keeps bureaucrats and programme
evaluators gainfully employed, but does little to address fundamental questions about the
universality of human cultural drug use, why young people in contemporary western
culture are curious about drugs, how cultures and contexts of use mediate benefits and
risks, and why some individuals may develop serious drug use problems but others not.

Schön‘s (1983) proposed professional development model of reflective practice is one

that holds promise for educators tasked with delivering school-based drug education.
Reflective practice allows for educative flexibility and adaptability, rather than the rigid
compliance demanded of the technical rationalism of prevention. As Schön puts it,
―[w]hen a practitioner reflects in and on his practice, the possible objects of his reflection
are as varied as the kinds of phenomena before him and the systems of knowing-in-
practice which he brings to them‖ (1983, p. 62). The reflective practitioner of drug
education is challenged to find nuances in a domain [p. 365] that is often portrayed in
stark black-and-white terms. The teacher is encouraged ―to reflect on the tacit norms and
appreciations which underlie a judgment, or on the strategies and theories implicit in a
pattern of behaviour‖ (Schön, 1983, p. 62). With respect to educating teachers to do drug
education, Schön‘s model encourages reflection on one‘s own relationship with
psychoactive substances and on the inconsistencies of cultural norms that promote the use
of some substances but prohibit others. The reflective practice approach to preparing
teachers for drug education offers an alternative to dogmatic instructional methods of
prevention that seem more indoctrinatory than educational.

Conclusion
Drug education has been a part of North American schooling since not long after the
expansion of public education in the latter half of the 19th century. However, the
approaches taken by the early temperance movement campaigns and those taken by
modern prevention programmes such as D.A.R.E. seem to have more similarities than
differences, and neither was or has been effective at achieving their stated goals of
instilling an ethic of abstinence. However, as with other domains of ―vice,‖ such as sex
education, drug education is not a straightforward subject to address in schools. Teacher
education for drug education is complicated by the contested aims of drug education, the
inherently contentious nature of the subject, and the issues around the construction of
knowledge about drugs.

However, doing little nothing to prepare teachers for drug education, as is presently the
case in some jurisdictions, is unfair both to novice teachers and to their students. A
teacher education programme that included a drug education component would need to
ensure teacher educators are well-versed in the content knowledge of drug issues (as per
Shulman‘s content knowledge) and that pre-service teachers are encouraged to engage in
reflective practice in preparing for and delivering lessons about drugs. And to be
consistent with the educational aims of fostering critical thinking, teachers need to be
prepared to engage in open, honest dialogue about drugs and drug use that does not rely
on scare tactics. Despite the efforts of both the architects and those on the front lines of
the current war on drugs, the attempt to indoctrinate youth in vain hope of achieving a
drug-free country or world is a questionable agenda. Rather, drug education needs to
acknowledge that psychoactive substances are an established part of human cultural
environments and that they pose risks and benefits depending on who uses them, when
and where, and for what purposes.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Anne Phelan, from the University of British Columbia's
Department of Curriculum Studies, and the journal Teaching and Teacher Education‘s
two anonymous reviewers for offering helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

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