Lucy Uprichard2013-05-20T18:42:22-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=lucy-uprichardCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Lucy UprichardGood old fashioned elbow grease.From Vanity to 'Thinspiration': Samantha Brick Has Become a Problemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31354942013-04-23T19:00:00-04:002013-04-23T13:20:57-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/Daily Mail about 'why women hate [her] for being beautiful' and making an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, Brick has largely kept out of the public eye of late.
Although it has been easy to brush off Brick's inane articles in the past on the basis that they have very little bearing on reality, the content of her latest piece, be it written for inflammatory purposes or not, is inexcusable. Brick states that she is 42 and has "been on a permanent diet for the past 30 years", adding that "any self-respecting woman wants to be thin, and to be thin you need to spend your life on a diet".
Putting the intense pity felt for someone whose self-respect can be measured in kilograms aside for one moment, Brick's unambiguous and deliberate tying of self-worth to waist size is problematic; particularly when the clear implication is that girls should be dieting from the age of 12.
In a country with a depressingly high rate of pre-teen eating disorders, advocating a diet of a paltry 1,000 calories per day whilst saying 'the world pays no attention to dumpy girls' is beyond irresponsible - it's downright stupid.
While it is fairly obvious that Brick's writing is intended almost solely for the purpose of bringing far more hits to the Daily Mail site than it would otherwise receive, this is not sufficient reason to disregard what she is saying. The sad truth of the matter is that Samantha Brick's words do not exist in a vacuum, and nor do they represent a minority view; she may be acting as a mouthpiece for the bizarre and impossible aesthetic boundaries places on women by society at large, but she also represents the secret fears of women everywhere. With the UK being home to an estimated 1.6 million people with eating disorders - and women making up around 90% of sufferers - Brick's reckless behaviour as someone with exposure to a significant female audience is unforgivable.
It would be unfair to regard Samantha as anything like a cause of these issues, but by acting as a willing mouthpiece for sexist and demeaning notions about beauty, she is playing more than merely a passive role in perpetuating harmful ideas about weight. By going so far as to talk proudly about her self-named 'Polo diet' (one packet of mints for breakfast and another for dinner), she has aggressively placed herself alongside those in the internet's most depressing corners: 'thinspiration' websites.
Although my sympathy for anyone whose mind has clearly been so tainted by the demands of an appearance-obsessed media is enormous, Brick's willingness to be another voice preaching the arbitrary value of body weight above all other features stretches its limits. While she is entitled to hold any view she likes, when you create something meant for public consumption, there is a responsibility as a writer and a public figure to consider the impact it could have.
As a journalist, Samantha Brick should have known better than to write and publish phrases such as 'nothing in life signifies failure better than fat' into a world already plagued by weight issues; as an adult, she should have recognised that generating content accessible to troubled young girls validating their suspicions that 'self-denial' can be a 'best friend' is unacceptable.
And if nothing else, then as a woman, Brick should not have made the decision to speak for, rather than against, the dangerous and twisted beauty perceptions within our culture. Her words may come from a place of ignorance, but they are delivered to ears that accept them as the norm.]]>The Problem With PETAtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29458702013-03-24T20:59:30-04:002013-03-26T10:28:23-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/
PETA, or the People's Ethical Treatment of Animals, claim to recognise the "right of all animals to be treated with respect". They are famous for their outlandish stunts such as dousing Kim Cattrall in red paint and involving celebrities such as Pamela Anderson in their efforts. Although they are most likely the world's largest animal rights group in the world, and certainly the most well-known, PETA seem to care very little for one animal in particular: human beings.
PETA have a long history of using 'scandalous' pictures in an endeavour to gain some edge in their advertising campaigns. Their complete lack of respect in regard to the human female form is incredible, and their adverts frequently engage in some kind of body-shaming message in their endeavours to bring a worldwide switch to vegetarianism or veganism. They have a habit of objectifying women for causes as utterly unrelated to sex as bull-riding and getting your five-a-day. After looking through a selection of their ads, both past and present, what is notably lacking amongst the naked women and attempts at shock value is the presence of any actual animals.
Although they defend their decision to use almost exclusively naked women in their advertisements on the basis that 'sex sells', it cannot be overlooked that by replacing abused animals with abused women, they are hitting much too close to the truth. In a world where violence against women is rife, using shackled and bruised women in an attempt to promote ethical treatment of elephants is inappropriate and insensitive. Animal rights are important; there is a great degree of cruelty exercised towards creatures who are otherwise helpless, but when women are still treated as second-class citizens in many parts of the world, running adverts that show violence and brutality against them in an attempt to make a statement about animal mistreatment falls flat in the worst possible way. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals should not be so unable to simultaneously be People for the Respectful Treatment of Women's Bodies.
Overt sexism and misogyny aside for one moment, degrading women's bodies is unfortunately one of the more palatable of PETA's transgressions. In the past they have repeatedly used Holocaust imagery as part of their campaigns, defending their right to use images of now-dead children alongside caged pigs with the argument that 'free speech' should 'reign supreme'. In addition to this, PETA went on to make reference to Hitler and the idea of a 'master race' to protest dog breeding. Dissatisfied with appropriating only one tragedy of human history, PETA members dressed up as the Ku Klux Klan to protest Westminster Kennel Club dog show - a comparison they are seemingly still proud of, judging by the 'AKC (American Kennel Club) or KKK?' quiz on their site. One particularly outrageous advert likened feeding children meat to child abuse, at once undermining the true terrors of child abuse and groundlessly shaming lower-income parents who are forced to resort to fast food due to its relative convenience and cheapness compared to organic and fresh food.
In general, PETA tend to shy away from making excuses for their behaviour, and even when they do it seems somewhat insincere. Whilst they have admitted that their Holocaust ads were one step too far, they were quick to note in their apology that "the PETA staff who proposed that we do it were Jewish" - an excuse that has a distinctly 'but I CAN'T be racist - I have a black friend!' ring to it. Their behaviour is despicable and it is a great shame that they receive so much positive attention from high-status celebrities such as Paul McCartney and Eva Mendes (and although it almost goes without saying at this point, it is worth noting the difference between how PETA's male and female supporters are portrayed). PETA's campaigns attract a lot of attention, certainly - but like the BNP, the Westboro Baptist Church and other deliberately provocative organisations, PETA have made the mistake of confusing attention for approval, and controversy with actually being right.
Secondary schools must provide some basic teachings about STIs and HIV/AIDS and cover reproduction and puberty as specified in the science curriculum, and it is recommended - although not obligated - that some information about relationships and contraception is given. Faith schools and academies are subject to slightly different and frankly far hazier laws, but the basic principle is the same: teach kids what sex is, and the rest is optional.
Parents are at perfect liberty to remove their child from any SRE that is not specified as compulsory, meaning that even if a school chooses to go beyond the bare minimum, whether the pupils receive that information is ultimately up to their guardians. Whilst this opt-out system doesn't seem to be enforced frequently (the few studies done on the matter suggest the number is most likely less than 3%) the question of whether parents should be able to pull their child out of the learning process at all remains open.
As a result of all this subjectivity, sex education can range from being unsatisfying to downright useless. As a means of collecting research, I created a small-scale survey of my own and to enquire as to how people felt about their SRE and encouraged them to submit stories about how it was through my blog. Although my sample size was small, I found that my results largely reflected those done by the sexual health charity FPA and well-represented the views of young people about the education they received.
The frequency of sex education lessons should logically increase as the pupils get further and further into puberty, but over 70% of those who responded to my survey stated that their SRE took place either once a year or less - a statistic that includes my own experience. While most people seem to have had SRE that included information about condoms and menstruation, less than 5% had been taught anything about consent in sex or rape and sexual assault.
Despite an estimated one or two young people in every twenty being LGBT, a paltry 2% of those polled reported having been given any information about non-heterosexual relationships. This is detrimental to straight and LGBT people alike; students who are confused about their sexuality are denied access to helpful resources in a crucial part of their development and those who aren't are deprived of important lessons about respect and sexual variation. If done right, sex education could be an excellent platform to fight homophobia, sexism and slut-shaming before it turns into an unmovable adult mind-set.
Unfortunately, it's almost always done wrong. The people who sent me tales of their school's sex ed programs described feeling as if sex was being treated like 'a big danger they were preparing you for' and more 'embarrassing' and closed-minded than truly useful. Masturbation for boys was covered, for example, but not for girls.
Several people likened their SRE to this infamous scene from Mean Girls -humorous in the context of a film, but somewhat worrying when applied to real people in real schools. Although some reported positive experiences, mostly as a result of peer-based learning, the general consensus was that sex education fails to prepare students for the reality of sex at the time in their lives when it's becoming a progressively more relevant and important issue.
Sex education is desperately lacking in both regulation and deployment across the country. One in four pupils receive none at all, and those that do report a high level of dissatisfaction with what they receive. Teenage pregnancies and STI rates in young people are high, particularly in areas of poverty where students may have less access to decent resources and information outside of what is covered in school, and yet still Michael Gove refuses to attribute the failings of the government in implementing an effective system to anything less arbitrary than a lack of intelligence on the students' part.
In 2013, we simply cannot teach sex education like this; it is both an insult and a great disservice to Britain's young people to do so. Comprehensive coverage and frank, open discussions about sex and its role in life should not merely be encouraged, but made as necessary a part of the curriculum as science or maths. Ignoring the needs of teenagers just as they enter the beginnings of sexual maturity is downright illogical, and shouldn't be tolerated. For a safer, more knowledgeable Britain, be loud about what you want from sex education, and help provide future generations with the information we all had to find out alone - if we ever did at all.]]>Just A Joke: How Harmless Is Uni Lad?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26813472013-02-13T18:37:35-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/Uni Lad. It has been condemned for a whole host of offensive articles, most notably those condoning rape and other forms of sexual violence. Editor Alex Partridge states on the homepage that Uni Lad ' isn't out to offend' and that it is 'taking the piss out of the entire (normally female targeted) magazine industry' suggests that Uni Lad was at least originally meant to be a somewhat satirical site, poking fun at mainstream media and presenting a light-hearted view of so-called 'lad culture'. But with tales of misogyny and sexism becoming more prevalent in university news, how harmless can Uni Lad really be?
One major flaw in Uni Lad's self-identified piss-taking is that its content, however lewd and 'outrageous', isn't actually atypical of what really is in established lad mags such as FHM and Zoo. Phrases like 'smash her back doors in' are littered throughout their pages, with one study suggesting that the language in such magazines was indistinguishable to the general public from the language used by convicted sex offenders. While I don't want to suggest that all the contributors to these publications share the same ideology as rapists, there is really no need for Uni Lad to add to an already over-saturated market of misogyny. For 'absolutely inappropriate' humour under the doggedly defended label of 'banter', pretty much any male-targeted magazine will provide the goods - and if there is virtually no difference between the reality and the apparent caricature, then the function of the satire is defunct. In short, Uni Lad fails to provide an amusing alternative to popular media because the difference between one and the other is almost non-existent.
Related to this is the ever-growing issue of creative responsibility. With a following that currently stands at 423,000 on Facebook alone, should Uni Lad hold any blame for their influence over their patronage? I'm inclined to believe that they should. When your audience is close to hitting the half-a-million mark, it would be downright naive to pretend that you have no significant impact on the way that people think and act. Uni Lad's advocates brush off the hateful dialogue spurred by its articles as all part of the humour, which is one of the most convenient accountability-dodging excuses one could go for; nobody wants to be branded a killjoy. The problem with this is that the Uni Lad attitude doesn't end with screencaps stolen from Reddit, but exists in real people. I've met a fair few Uni Lads in my short time at university - I'd be surprised if there was a higher education institution in the country without a handful of them. It used to be easy to tell someone spouting outright racism, homophobia and sexism to shut up, but Uni Lad boys revel in the apparent infallibility of 'banter', a buzzword which seemingly allows anything to be said in the name of fun. Uni Lad itself might be confined only to an online presence, but its ruthless normalization of violence towards women and bigoted attitudes provides idiots not only with a platform to spout their abuse, but an entire culture validating their behaviour.
Sadly, what it comes down to is perspective. Because lad culture is centred around men, those who take part in it will never realise how unnerving it is for women. Since there is no industry built around the degradation and suggestion of sexual violence towards men, it's difficult to explain how a site dedicated to posting images of women with offhand comments about how they would 'destroy' her is often seen not as harmless fun but as a potential catalyst for abusive and dangerous behaviour. Uni Lad likes to think that what it is doing is in some way shocking and new, but it's really just the same old stuff that has been going on for years - predominantly white, straight men ridiculing almost every other demographic and perpetuating a culture that only sees women as sexual objects. They can see it as a joke because it's easy for them to laugh off such behaviour; those who do not have the privilege of being given an equally overpowering voice in society don't always feel the same way. And as long as that communication and equality gap exists - as long as Uni Lads are happy to laugh and joke about humiliating and physically damaging women as if it wasn't an ongoing reality for many - then Uni Lad and it's legion of fans are not harmless.]]>Chick Lit and Fangirls: Trivialising Women's Entertainmenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26308242013-02-06T11:31:46-05:002013-04-08T05:12:01-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/
Those interested in Sylvia Plath may have seen the recent controversy stirred by Faber with their 50th anniversary edition of 'The Bell Jar'. Criticism of the cover ranged from the obvious - that it doesn't relate to the plot and it's a bad picture - to the more complex, with sites such as Jezebel pointing out that a book that has traditionally been a staple on any feminist reading list probably shouldn't be aesthetically re-branded as the kind poolside novel one picks up at the airport (here I feel I should note that while I don't approve of Jezebel generally, I include them here because what they said is pretty on point). Marketing Plath's novel as 'chick lit' may seem like a fairly innocuous, if irritating, move, but to many it's indicative of the larger idea that entertainment created for, by and starring women simply isn't as important as other material. 'The Bell Jar' has been deliberately re-released as a 'women only' book, and consequentially demoted to the realms of literature seen as inferior. Why is this?
It starts with the terminology. The very phrase 'chick-lit' instantly sends our minds to a place of fluffy story-lines devoid of real substance. To my knowledge there is no equivalent commonly used expression for fiction marketed specifically at men, despite the fact that there are as many half-baked stories about action heroes and spies on the shelves of Waterstones as tales of romance and torrid affairs. Never have I heard the James Bond series referred to as 'dick lit', and yet that's exactly what it is. Both genres follow the basic formula of idealized characters in provocative or dangerous situations, and both directly appeal to the romanticized notion of femininity/masculinity. Neither type of book is meant to be the author's Magnum Opus, but rather just a quick read that satisfies the human need for a neat story. Replace the muscle-ridden action hero and explosives with a muscle-ridden pool boy and a hot tub and they're more or less the same trashy plot- and yet only 'chick lit' comes under fire for being vacuous.
This phenomenon is by no means reserved for books. 'Fangirl', the music world's favourite buzzword to express a level of devotion to a musician that is somewhat obsessive, or to imply that the appreciation isn't genuinely based on musical talent but on looks or persona, is an integrally gendered term. I'm no great fan of boy bands like One Direction and JLS, but frequently they are written off as ridiculous on the basis that they have a following of 'fangirls', or that they're annoying not because of their incessantly chirpy manufactured pop but because of their legions of 'fangirls'. Snobbery isn't exactly a rare occurrence in the perpetually self-important world of music journalism but as with 'chick lit', it does seem that the subtext of using the word is that a predominantly young female interest in a product is reason enough that it is shameful. Rather than attacking the content of what is being criticized, people are instead quick to take a shot at the demographic. Not only is this a lazy critique, but treating women's interest as if it is a kiss of death to credibility is misogynistic in the extreme.
It's incredibly easy to forget how words can carry more meaning than their general usage, especially when they have developed as slang references, and I readily admit to have considered myself somehow 'above' reading 'chick lit' and having called people 'fangirls' in the past. I never bothered to stop and consider the fact that I didn't feel the same arrogance about boy's books, or that perhaps it makes more sense to dislike a band based on their music than their following. It took a lot of reading articles like this and hearing about the struggle that female authors go through to stop publishers automatically disregarding their books as 'not for men' to grasp the idea that I wasn't feeling superior to books or music, but to other women. Next time you want to jeer at something, be it a book, film or band, stop and think about the words you use. Are you showing your distaste for the subject matter? Or are you just expressing scorn for women?]]>Rape: Stop Talking About Bodies and Start Talking About Peopletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25768152013-01-29T17:35:55-05:002013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/Joanna Lumley's controversial 'advice' to young women. Lumley warned not to "be sick in the gutter at midnight in a silly dress... because somebody will take advantage of you". This in turn prompted Gloucester MP Richard Graham to jump on the bandwagon and advise women against high heels and short skirts, on the basis that it makes it more difficult to run away in the event of a run-in with a rapist. Points about how clothes do not spontaneously appear on a woman prior to leaving the house but are in fact designed and marketed specifically with the idea that they should be worn on a night out aside, there is something deeply unsettling about the attitude people seem to have towards rape victims.
I don't mean to tar Lumley and Graham with the same brush as Todd Akin when it comes to opinions on rape; I think that their comments were more based on misguided ideas than any truly ingrained victim-blaming mentality. Neither seemed to have any malicious intent and it would be churlish to infer otherwise. Their opinions, however, do draw attention to the depressing trend in conversations about rape to list all the ways that the victim could have avoided their fate before even beginning to penalise the perpetrator. The idea that a hemline or heel height should be held accountable is offensive to men and women alike. Rape victims are not Sirens who lure in unsuspecting attackers, and rapists should never be treated as if they are merely people with a lower threshold to withstand desires of the flesh than others. Rape is a direct and deliberate act, not a result of a lack of control.
What disconcerts me most about these discussions, even more so than the nonchalant and offensive treatment of rape victims, is the insistence of discussing sexual assault not in terms of people, but in terms of bodies. 'She was asking for it', the oldest and unfortunately most prevalent victim-blaming adage, is almost invariably linked to the inability of men to control their primal urges when faced with a scantily-clad women. This is wrong on so many levels. Bodies are not separate entities from people - when we talk of rapists, we are not talking about wild lust and irrepressible bodily reactions but people, with intentions and responsibility to face up to their acts of cruelty. When we discuss rape victims, it's not thighs and breasts at the centre of the discussion, but human beings. It may well be easier to couch rape in abstract, personality-free terms, but that is not and never will be how it is. Neither bodies nor clothes cause rape; people do.
One of the best examples of this deliberate detachment of emotion and act is the stock example people give when talking about avoiding rape, which is comparing rape victims to property of some sort - emphasised by Richard Graham's repeated references to 'risk management'. Those who happened to be drunk at the time of their attack are met with analogies of unlocked houses from which possessions are stolen, flashy watches that lead to muggings, and so on. Dehumanising women by likening them to material goods is hardly anything new, but the extension of this comparison to rape victims is one that I personally find disgusting. As a student who is admittedly much too drunk much too regularly, it's deeply troubling to know that should I ever undergo the terrible experience of being raped, countless people will chalk it up to the sexual equivalent of having my front door unlocked.
Graham and Lumley, however unwittingly, are representations of the depressingly widely held notion that rape victims have no concern for personal safety, and that any trouble that befalls them is therefore their own fault. In reality, there is no precaution that you can take. You cannot lock your body like a car and consider yourself home safe or ward off potential attackers with thicker tights and higher necklines. The world demands an impossibly high degree of self-awareness from rape victims that simply isn't expected of those who are robbed or mugged. We are taught not to steal, lie and fight, but we are not taught not to rape - we are told instead, that we should not be rape victims. The status of 'victim' is seen as avoidable, rather than the status of 'rapist'.
I do agree with Richard Graham on one point - that this is an issue that needs to be discussed. But not in the same way it has been done for decades. In a world where politicians believe that sexual assault is nothing more than 'bad sexual etiquette', lawyers deeming rape victims to be partially responsible for their attacks because they aren't 'respectable' and a startling number of victims choosing to stay silent rather than risk coming forward, it is time to stop harping on about exposed body parts and begin to be concerned about the people attached to them.]]>How Good Is Porn?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25329122013-01-23T08:28:35-05:002013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/"increasingly pornified" youth culture in Britain and advised parents to talk more with their children about sexuality and its place in modern culture. This, perhaps, is not a conversation that should be exclusively for young people, but one that we should all be having. How much do we really know about porn and its impact on modern living?
The internet has more or less revolutionized the way porn can be accessed. It's often said that half of the internet is pornographic images. That isn't true (it's really more like 4%) but it can seem that we are subjected to a disproportionate number of sexual images every day, particularly in the form of pop-up ads. I once spent a week keeping a record of the number of advertisements for porn that I came across in normal internet browsing and ended up with a tally of around twenty. Some were obviously more explicit than others, but even the tamest seemed to suggest a degree of objectifying fantasy bordering on the comical- I simply refuse to believe that there are that many hot singles in my area. We are so used to seeing overtly sexual images in our daily lives that we become almost desensitized to it. That's where How Good Is Porn comes in.
I found out about HGIP through a flyer in a collection of Manchester circulars. Its design is deliberately striking and the lack of information bar the web address cannot fail to capture at least momentary attention. Logging onto the site takes you to a short anonymous survey with questions such as 'porn stars are lucky, loaded and love it - agree/disagree'. Answering them redirects to a page that gives you some quotes and statistics in regards to the true nature of porn. Without revealing all the answers here, I think it's safe to say that some of the numbers are, to say the least, shocking. I for one certainly didn't know that 20% of all pornographic images online are of children.
At the end of the survey there is an option to give feedback, through which I attempted to get in contact with the creators in the hope of discovering more about who they are. In response I received an email telling me that HGIP is run by an group of creatives and campaigners 'who for various reasons have become concerned about the negative impact of porn'. They likened the porn problem to 'an Emperor's New Clothes thing... we are simply hoping to be the little kid who points and says "anyone noticed what is going on here?"' Preferring to remain anonymous so that 'people will focus on the cause rather than us', the people behind HGIP are concerned about raising awareness about porn and its unspoken underlying issues.
If nothing else, the HGIP project forces you to reassess exactly how much of a growing concern porn is. Everybody knows at the very back of their minds that so much of pornography is morally questionable to say the least, but we rarely mention it or act upon it. There is a misconception in some feminist circles that porn is just another form of sexual freedom that should be tolerated without comment. This shouldn't be the case - if there is an area where we should be as critical as possible it is sex work. Romanticized images of Billie Piper in 'Secret Diary Of A Call Girl' aside, there are real dangers in the world of prostitution and porn that cannot be ignored, and the How Good Is Porn project is one small step towards bringing these into the public consciousness.
The people running HGIP told me that this campaign is just the beginning of a few things they are intending to do to 'get people thinking'. I don't know how widespread the campaign is, or whether it is localized to Manchester, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out. In the meantime, I urge all who read this to click the link, visit the site and share it around. Let's start a national dialogue about porn.]]>Drug Culture - It Needs to Be Taughttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24788072013-01-15T19:00:00-05:002013-03-17T05:12:01-04:00Lucy Uprichardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucy-uprichard/
Quite frankly, the state of drugs education in schools is appalling. Students are given the odd lecture on the dangers of cannabis and warned that it will ruin their lives and futures should they succumb to such sinful habits, but little more than that. Like me, many will be able to count the scarce number of occasions they were given information on one hand, and I'd bet even fewer could name a time when the content that was provided wasn't meagre and useless. Coupled with the fact that the 'Talk To Frank' site looks more like a menu than anything truly resembling a cautionary tale, it can be nigh-on impossible for young people to build up any practical knowledge on the matter whilst still at school.
And practical knowledge is exactly what they need. Like traditionalists who claim that anything but abstinence-only sex education is more or less an incitement for teenagers to go at it like rabbits, an alarming number of people seem to hold the opinion that informing students about drugs and their various effects is tantamount to advocating them. This, of course, is nonsense. Although newspapers and Michael Gove's perpetually worried-looking expression would have us believe otherwise, schools are not merely there to appear in exams league tables once a year; they're a preparation for life. A lot of what you learn in the classroom ends up staying there post-education, particularly for those who go on to do a degree in one specific subject. I can't tell you one time I've thought about the water cycle since embarking upon my studies post-secondary school. Much to my teachers' chagrin, the chief causes of the Great Depression haven't crossed my mind once. But the knowledge that I could have used - that everybody under the age of 18 could use now - is how to cope with the reality of drugs.
It might not be as palatable to parents as learning about French vocabulary, but once you get to the age of 16 or so, learning not just about the side-effects of recreational drugs but what action to take if it all goes wrong is paramount. It's statistically likely that one in five teenagers between 16 and 18 will have experimented with drugs, and the older they get, the more that number rises. Knowing how to cope with someone having a bad trip or how to tell when something is cut with another, more dangerous product shouldn't have to be stuff that kids pick up through experience. Speaking as someone from a rural area with two teenage deaths from drugs in the run-up to Christmas, I am willing to go out on a limb and assure the government that this information could save lives.
To some, it might seem like extreme measures to teach young people to regulate their water intake when on certain drugs or to be able to confidently assure someone on ketamine that they will be able to move their limbs again soon. Many would argue that the knowledge of how to avoid common drug-related injuries would result in teenagers going out and using it to their advantage, safety instructions having removed a great deal of the fear factor schools instil in them, but I truly don't believe this to be the case. It's fairly well-documented in today's generation and more or less every single one preceding it since the sixties that so long as recreational drugs are available, they will be used. Better to know and not need than to need and not know.
In an age where many schools may well be converting to academies in the near future, the likelihood of a universal drugs curriculum seems far out of reach. Soon the educational content of many institutions will be in their own hands, meaning that a 'just say no' tactic may well be the only guidance for a great deal of students. Educators: I implore you. Don't let drugs solely be the topic of after-school specials. Teach your pupils how to say no, sure; but teach them how to survive if they do say yes.]]>
