image is nothing

I took a PSHE class today. We were looking at drugs - handy really since I also teach a drug awareness course at BB - two lessons prepared for the price of one.

We're told that modern kids are a different breed. That they're not as naive as we were when we were their age. We're told that they grow up faster than we did, that they're streetwise. We're sold an image of a teenager who has grown up surrounded by new technology, who is media savvy and who knows everything there is to know about drugs.

And yet here I am, in a school not five miles away from what is known as the drugs capital of Northern Ireland, and I am astounded by some of the misconceptions these sixteen year olds have about drugs. What they don't know about controlled substances could be written in a... well, a sixteen part leather bound volume of scientific research. They know very little.

A few of them know someone, some even have family members, who have been convicted of possession or supply of narcotics, yet few of them could tell you the difference between cocaine and crack cocaine. They're able to recite lists of class A drugs without any bother but can't think of more than a couple short or long term effects. On several occasions during the lesson they mixed cannabis up with ecstasy (in their heads - not literally.) It all worried me greatly.

Is there a risk that we've let the image of the all-new-teen (fortified with six added vitamin and extra grownup-ness) mask just how immature and vulnerable they really are? Is it like the bravado of a fighter who knows he can't win a fight but doesn't want to lose face? Or perhaps it's like a politician who knows he can't win an election but thinks he can avoid it by giving out the image of someone who can? I don't know. But I do know that, where young people are concerned, we can take nothing for granted. There is far too much at stake. Image is nothing; thirst is everything.