Teen drugs, violence worrying boomers

By Marilyn Elias
USA Today

Baby boomers are more worried about high school violence and drug use than about the quality of their teenagers' academic education, according to a large AARP survey out yesterday.

Teachers get high grades in a survey of 1,000 boomers 39 to 57 years old who attended public high school and have a child who either graduated from or is attending a public high school. A little more than half say today's kids are getting a better education than they did, and about seven in 10 say they're satisfied with high-school teachers.

"It's a myth that there's widespread unhappiness with education, although there are probably some pockets where there's deep dissatisfaction, places with fewer resources and more social problems," says Jeffrey Love, AARP research director and the study leader.

The worst problems at today's high schools were minor concerns during their teen years, baby boomers say.

Among examples:

• 70 percent say drug and alcohol are major problems; 25 percent say these were big concerns at their high school.
• 64 percent see undisciplined and disruptive students as a significant problem today; only 1 percent recall this as a major difficulty in their school years.
• 54 percent list violence and lack of school safety as a key problem now; 7 percent saw it as a paramount concern during their teen years.

The telephone survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Some of this "good old days" view may be unwarranted nostalgia, suggests psychologist Jerald Bachman of the University of Michigan. He co-directs an annual survey of high school seniors. Use of marijuana and other illegal drugs peaked in the late 1970s when younger boomers were teens, he says. Alcohol use on campuses rose in the late 1970s, peaking in the early '80s.

Older boomers may have been around less alcohol and drugs, "but that's strictly speculation because we don't have good figures from back then," Bachman says.

On the safety issue, "I remember plenty of bullies and fights and kids hurt at our high school. Of course, the difference was, you never thought anyone would bring a gun to school," says Scott Poland, 54, director of psychological services at the Cypress-Fairbanks school district in Houston. Poland served on crisis teams that counseled parents, teachers and students after school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.

"These are very rare events that got huge publicity, and the publicity makes the threat seem exaggerated," he says. "School is still the safest place for kids, safer than the streets or their own homes."

School violence steadily dropped from 1992 to 2000, the last year figures are available, even as the number students increased, says William Modzeleski, director of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program at the U.S. Department of Education. Statistics came from random samples of schools.

But schools aren't required to report crimes to any federal source, so some violence probably goes unreported, says Curt Lavarello of the National Association of School Resource Officers, a nonprofit that trains campus-based police officers.

"We don't even know the full extent of the violence, but campus policing was a novelty back in the '60s. Now it's the fastest growing area of law enforcement. That tells you something, because law enforcement follows need," Lavarello says.