From Bonds to Landis to high schoolers
When I accepted the job that payed for my college education, I had to head over to the doctor's office and provide a sample to show that I did not use drugs. It made sense at the time, considering that my future employer wanted responsible employees who would provide dependable and efficient service to guests.
As the professional sports world continues to struggle with the issue of drugs, high schools across our country also face similar issues. The question is, do high school's have the right to randomly test students for drug use?
This question confuses me for two reasons. Do we view schools more as providing a service to customers, in our case students, or do we view schools as an employer and employee relationship? The difficulty is, we really are a mix of both.
While we are responsible as schools to provide a service, education, to our students, we are also working together with our students to provide a service, responsible citizenship, to our community.
If we view our schools in the former, then I don't believe we have a right to test our students for drug use. Target wouldn't consider testing its customers for drug use because there is a good chance they'd lose a few customers. But, if we view our schools in the latter, then we certainly have a right to test students for drug use because we have a responsibility to our community.
posted by Mr. McNamar @ 4:05 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I'm not aware of any schools that are testing students for drugs who are not also participating in extra-curricular activities. If this is the case, then drug testing is simply a barrier that must be overcome in order to participate in a non-required activity. I like your question of whether students are customers or employees. But I don't think they have to fit neatly into either category for it to be appropriate to randomly give drug tests.
Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html
I think that drug testing would create a sense of mistrust between the students and the coaches/teachers. I played a lot of sports throughout my schooling career and i never even thought about drug testing, but had it been something that came up i think i would have felt like the coaches/teachers had no trust for us players. I believe that school is for everyone and the sprts should be too. I think that as teachers we are providing a service, and if we drug test that will single people out and will possibly make them feel like our service wants to exclude them. Drugs are a problem in schools today, but I don't think that we need to exclude students who have that problem. I believe we just need to offer support and ways for them to confidentially kick thier addiction.
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