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There are many reasons why young people turn to drugs. This is but one reason but I think an important one. I am saddened by how in this country education continues to be a place to sort children rather than a place where they come to know who they truly are. I'm frustrated by how public education tends to focus on sameness and content versus uniqueness and meaning. I'm disappointed that youngsters in school learn to compete with each other rather than learning to reach out to one another. One question I hear over and over again from teenagers is "why won't anyone listen to what I want?" The sorting machine drives young people down the path to college and professions exposing them to intense competition and very little time to learn or reflect upon what it means to simply be a human being rather than a "success". Education periodically swings back and forth between a focus on a more humanistic experiential curriculum and a content-based basics approach. Why there is not room for both I'll never understand. It's been quite some time since K12 focused on feelings and humaneness and today the focus is more and more on feeding kids facts. Those that are best at retaining and regurgitating are successful. Those who are not fall behind, become disengaged and feel less than. As early as kindergarten kids are sorted into those who can and those who can't. The kids sense the sorting and drift towards those in their respective groups. Those who can't begin a slow but steady disengagement from school. Neither group is well served by this process. Neither has a true sense of whom they are and what it means to belong to their community and to the community of man. Classrooms are sorting tools rather than places where young people learn how relate with themselves and others and begin to explore their place in the universe. How many adults do you know who, after working their behinds off for years, wake up one day only to find that they have lost a part of their lives. How many begin the desperate search for meaning and true intimacy in their lives? How many have, during the course of their drive for success, turned to alcohol and drugs as a replacement for meaning? All too often the alcohol and drugs begin long before the awareness that what they're trying to do is to fill the hole in their hearts that has been dug while their heads were being filled with facts. Here's to learning who we are and what our unique purpose is for being on this planet. Dr. Dan Kaufman
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