The DFYIT
Program
May 20, 2004
Lakeside High School parents and students are upset about dope-sniffing
dogs at Lakeside High School, questioning whether the civil rights
of students are being violated. Parents
and students discussed the matter with the ACLU on May 19, 2004, at a local
fire station.
In 1995, the Nine Mile Falls School District school board
approved the use of the DFYIT — Drug Free Youth In Town — program at
Lakeside High School. The program used
as the model for the Lakeside High School program was Lake City High School in
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Interesting that in March 1996, after seven years of the DFYIT program being at Lake City High School, parents of
students expressed the same concerns about dope-sniffing dogs at their high
school as parents in the Nine Mile Falls School District are now expressing
after eight years of the program being at Lakeside High School. Is it a coincidence that dope-sniffing dogs
were brought into both schools using the DFYIT
program?
Were the lockers and belongings of those students not in
the DFYIT program singled out for inspection? Were the lockers and belongings of those
students who have tested positive for drugs in the DFYIT
program singled out for inspection? What
correlation exists between data accumulated by those running the DFYIT program and law enforcement doing the searches?
The following PDF files regard my concerns voiced at the
time this program was brought into the Nine Mile Falls School District. My concerns, however, fell on deaf ears —
both parents and board members. The goal
was not to teach students that drugs were bad for them, bad for their health,
morally wrong, the goal was to reward the students for exhibiting the wanted
behaviors, just as the assessments now being given, such as the Washington
Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), are a
subjective measure of whether the student is exhibiting the wanted behaviors in
accordance with the SCANS — Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary
Skills — competencies benchmarked by the State Essential Academic Learning
Requirements or EALRs.
Such an approach is known as operant conditioning — rewarding the child for doing what you want
and punishing the child for not doing what you want. Operant conditioning makes the child
extrinsically motivated (motivated and/or manipulated by stimuli beyond themselves)
rather than intrinsically motivated (motivated from within themselves, their
moral center).
While the cause might be noble in this instance of drugs,
the long-term effect is not. The target
of operant conditioning is not motivated by morals, standards or values, the target is motivated by reward. What happens when there is no one there to
reward the child for not pulling the trigger, killing, injuring or maiming
someone? What happens when the dope
dealer, gang member or criminal says he will reward the child for committing a
criminal act? What happens when the
pedophile entices the child to participate in sexual acts for the reward? Operant conditioning says if the reward is
wanted bad enough, the target of the process can be motivated and/or
manipulated to do most anything — good or bad.
Letter to the Community;
October 15, 1995
Second Letter to the Community
The Nine Mile Falls School
District Insert
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