How DARE them: keep what works
By Brent E. McCoy thereal@roadrunner.com

One of the unfortunate things about writing a column that appears every other week is that it is sometimes difficult to be timely. When this column was written, the vote on the future of the DARE program was a week away. By the time this article is delivered, the vote will have been taken two days ago.

Whether the vote is in a week or two days ago, it is unfortunate that it has come to a vote at all.

As a parent of two DARE graduates, I fully appreciate the valuable impact that the program has had on our youth and there is no doubt in my mind as to its effectiveness. I'm all for encouraging parents to take the lead in drug, alcohol, and tobacco education, but often two facts are overlooked.

First, many parents are not equipped or are unwilling to take on this task. Second, as most every teenager knows, your own parents are idiots. The other kid's parents may be pretty smart and, as a parent, you may seem pretty smart to someone else's kid, but your own kids are probably amazed that you can remember to breath.

The DARE program educated our kids before they were inundated by peer pressure to try this or take that. It gave them the confidence and self esteem to make good decisions. These are things that can last a life time.

The DARE program worked. It was fine tuned over the course of many years. If it is going to be replaced by something that does the same thing, why not replace it with the same thing.

Some readers will know that I am a big fan of the game of baseball. I know from experience that you can play the game of baseball with a wad of masking tape for a ball, a broom, or a stick for a bat, and pieces of paper or your younger brother for the bases and it's almost the same thing.

However, a bat, a ball and a bag are better. A bat, a ball and a bag are the real thing. The reason that they are the real thing is that the concept has been refined over the years and it works. The real thing costs more than the other stuff, but it works.

This year, in professional basketball, they started the season with a new ball that many experts insisted was better than the old ball for many reasons. Scientifically, it was reported to be a terrific ball. It had everything. The only thing it wouldn't do was allow players to play the game. Fortunately, they had some of the old balls still around. Maybe they should have tested the ball first.

Maybe we should test Project Alert first. We, as a society, have come a long way in education over the past 200 years. Unfortunately, there are some school boards and school districts that just feel the need to change things even if they work. Remember the "New Math" and later the "New Math"?

Over 100 ago Mark Twain remarked, "First, God created idiots. That was just for practiceThen He created school boards." He would occasionally include other government agencies in that little saying and I'll leave it to the reader to decide how far we've really come.

Mayor Hunter has noted most of the reasons that the DARE program was so valuable in his letter in the June 8 edition of this paper. MrHunter also expressed that the decision to end the DARE program was his greatest disappointment in his 11 years as mayor. I'm sure that if the vote went against the DARE program, it is the greatest disappointment to many of us who have been citizens of Moorpark for many years.

If there is no more DARE program it might mean that the kids won't be able to hang around the DARE car. Some day, perhaps because there was no DARE program, these kids might get to see a regular police car. It will probably be just a black-and-white car and they might only be able to see it from the back seat. But it will be almost as good and it won't cost as much.