Saying No to Ron and Nancy: School-Based Drug Abuse Prevention Programs in the 1980S

The paper questions the individualism inherent in many prevention programs and argues that the recent drug scare has intensified some programs' social control functions. Responding to pressure from corporations and the breakdown of traditional socializing agencies, schools have assumed greater responsibility for students' moral behavior. Through drug abuse prevention programs in particular, schools have encouraged the accumulation of social skills as a means to ensure success, and they have increasingly applied authoritarian sanctions along with psychological manipulations in an attempt to regulate student behavior. This paper suggests an alternative model for drug abuse prevention along the lines of Paolo Freire's and Ira Shor's dialogical education.