For the entire duration of my
secondary school years, I had to go to
PSE lessons (Personal and
Social Education). Every year, we covered the same things:
sex, drugs, and... no, actually that was it. The
sex education became more risqué as time went by, giving it a bit of
variety, but the drugs education was the same, year upon
year.
For
some reason, I tended to listen in these classes, and actually read the
leaflets we were
bombarded with. Perhaps I had a growing interest in sexual
deviancy and drug use, who knows. This made the repeated drugs education
very boring.
Then, one day in the fourth year, the lesson was a bit
different: there was a guest present, a man from the schools/police
liaison unit. He was here to teach us about drugs, show us
samples, etc.
Same meat, different gravy. For one part of the talk, he had three
buckets labelled
Class A,
Class B and
Class C*, and racquetballs with drug names written on in
felt pen. The man would hold up a ball, and
ask the class which bucket to put it in.
I was bored. I was young.
I was arrogant. I decided to be a bit of a smartarse, and
basically whipped off all the answers for each ball as soon as he held it up.
Man: "Okay, what about 'Speed'?"
Me: "Chemical name Amphetamine Sulphate. Class B if ingested or inhaled, Class A if injected intravenously."
Anyway, this reduced the length of the drug talk down to about 15 minutes, and
we all left early.
On the following
Monday, I was asked to go to the
Head Of Year's office during registration. I didn't know why, and was a bit worried, as HOY's deal with punishment as well as
pastoral care. I came in, and she asked me to sit down. The
conversation went something like this:
HOY: "The police liason officer who conducted your PSE lesson last Friday came to see me, after the lesson ended. He was very concerned about how much you knew about drugs. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
Me: "What?"
HOY: "He wondered where you got that information... he was worried you might be mixed up in some bad things."
Me: "Jesus Christ! You've been teaching us all this stuff for four years! I actually listen, and I practically get accused of being a junkie."
The
interview was rapidly curtailed, and I was set free unto the school with a new tale of
management incompetence. With hindsight, I realise she was only doing the standard back-covering exercise that schools have to (see
this node), but it still seemed
damn stupid at the time.
*
The UK drug classification system. Class A drugs are very illegal, Class B drugs are just illegal, Class C drugs are legal, unless obtained through false prescription.