Raising Questions about a Failed Education Program

 Dare to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools by Max Felker-Kantor

1927 antidrug cartoon. Image: New York Academy of Medicine

Raymond Wambsgans from Akron Ohio, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The Provost Marshal Office’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education Lion, Daren, interacts with community members during the Joshua Tree Community

Days Summer Splash at the Joshua Tree Community Center in Joshua Tree, Calif., June 18, 2016. (Official Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Levi

Schultz/Released)

Thank you to NetGalley and the University of North Carolina Press for providing a preview copy of this excellent and important book. Like many kids from the 80s and 90s, I too had experiences with the “Just Say No!” brand of drug deterrence. Along with the messages in popular school publications and on sitcoms, my school also participated in some kind of DARE program. I can’t remember if it was an actual DARE program since I don’t remember on going lessons. However, as other PA kids may remember, we were frequently visited by Trooper Ash (who showed up surprisingly in Alex Winter’s awesome Zappa documentary). However, all digressions aside, I bring this up because Max Felker-Kantor has written a book that importantly interrogates these kinds of programs in schools to ultimately conclude that their purpose was more about a PR program for police rather than any kind of drug deterrence. Much like Felker-Kantor’s conclusions about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of DARE, I too recall learning and becoming more interested in drugs as a result of the officer’s visit. I still recall the briefcase full of paraphernalia and can easily remember the feather roach clip, proudly returning home from school to tell my mom I learned what a roach clip was. Nevertheless, Felker-Kantor’s meticulous research into the history, program evaluations, and popular perceptions of DARE help to clarify what its ultimate goal was: to humanize police, while also establishing a continued surveillance system in American schools. I honestly hadn’t thought much about that. I’ve worked in education for nearly 25 years and since Columbine, have sadly come to accept that school resource officers (SROs) have become a part of education. However, this book brings about a better understanding of how these officers have arrived and how DARE tried to tie 9/11 to a need for more police presence in schools. I found this book to be not only insightful, but also necessary for today as more and more ideologies continue to push into schools under the false pretense of protecting children. While not directly stated, Felker-Kantor’s research and analysis presents some important lessons in considering how using children and education can pressure politicians, policy makers and public support into giving up their freedoms or easily accepting increased police presence in our lives. Additionally, I appreciated this book’s analysis of how the presence of police can vary for different groups. Until recently, I didn’t realize that DARE also pressured children to snitch on their parents’ drug and alcohol use. Bettina Love’s amazing book Punished for Dreaming also shared how programs like DARE impact students of color and ultimately cause more harm than good. I highly recommend this book for educators and others working with students and schools to better understand how programs with good intentions might ultimately have harmful outcomes for students. Furthermore, it's important to read to understand how political pressure can often influence learning and pressure schools to accept a greater police presence. There were so many great ideas in this book, and it applies to all of society, not just teachers and schools.