Philosophy of Campaign:
The purpose of the public awareness campaign and presentation is to bring society’s false assumptions into consciousness:
- Youths are associated with negative alcohol-related behaviors
- Youths’ values, opinions and beliefs do not matter
- Youths are not responsible and competent in terms of alcohol consumption
Parents need to be educated that appropriate alcohol behaviors are modeled by using alcohol in an unemotional and controlled way. It is important to teach children that alcohol is normal, it is not a sign of adulthood, and its purpose is not to get intoxicated (Plaut, 1967; Wilkinson, 1970; Hanson; 1972).
The method currently used for alcohol education excludes young people and is counterproductive. The mistake of parents and educators is not preparing children for the realities of life. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children how to approach dangerous situations and activities such as driving, swimming, drinking, and sex. However, with driving and swimming, parents are very thorough when teaching their children what’s right and wrong. With sex and alcohol, parents only use the term “don’t”, instead of teaching the right and wrong way to approach these activities. Parents are later faced with their children not following their instructions to abstain, and have alternatively learned inappropriate behaviors instead. Therefore, parents and educators must learn how to better socialize children to understand drinking in moderation and prevention of future alcohol problems (Cisin, 1978).
The Campaign:
a) An empowering and enlightening presentation should be given to parents, teachers, schools and school boards, community meetings, and alcohol related groups and associations to deliver our goals, objectives, over-arching messages, and supporting evidence.
b) Visual presentations and controversial posters should be distributed and posted to get the message heard and circulating.
2 comments:
OMG, I never thought of it like that...
Parents do avoid teaching their kids about proper sex and alcohol behaviors, and then we ask why they are out of control...
I agree, we need to show people their mistakes when teaching children about these types of behaviors...
We think that as a whole, we often don't think about parents having to talk to their kids about alcohol like other issues. The example of swimming really helps us to illustrate this issue. Parents often enroll their children in swimming lessons once a week for often many years to ensure that their child knows how to swim and is aware of safe water practices. Alcohol can also be seen as having the potential for danger and harm much like water. Yet, all that we do is teach our children to avoid it. Why do we tell our children to avoid alcohol but encourage them to learn how to swim?
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