by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
June 28, 2004
It is often said that kids should stay in school. If they drop out, they will not be able to find meaningful work and will end up hanging around on street corners selling drugs. Well, not exactly. It seems that in some schools students who have chosen to remain in the educational system don’t learn enough to prepare them for a life in the outdoor pharmaceutical business. at least this is the way it was for two teenaged B.C. girls.
When school resumed following the Thanksgiving weekend last year, one Grade 11 student returned to classes after having obtained a kilo of cocaine. She and a fellow classmate decided they would break the coke down into ounces and sell it. But alas, neither of them knew how many ounces there are in a kilo. What to do? Perplexed, they did what any student thirsting for knowledge would do under the circumstances--they asked their math teacher. These facts all surfaced at the trial of the young girls who were charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
The story of the girls who sought the assistance of their private school math teacher in order for them to begin successful careers as coke dealers was treated by the media as the humourous incident that it at first seems to be. But the reality of what transpired in the Victoria school has ominous tones, not just for the teens or the school, but for society.
Do these kids learn anything in school? Back in the olden days, no one would ever get to Grade 11 without having learned how to convert metric into imperial and vice versa. It appears these girls didn’t have a clue. They have spent 12 years of their lives in school and they aren’t even equipped to go out and be criminals. Had the thought ever occurred to them that the coke could have been sold in grams? Probably not and it is probably too much to expect that they would know how many grams there are in a kilogram, if in fact they knew that a kilo is short for kilogram.
It is also hard to believe that two 17-year-old girls who attend a private school would not have at least some access to the internet. It would have taken under a minute to go to a search engine, type in "metric conversion" and find out exactly how many ounces there are in a kilo. Perhaps they hadn’t learned enough to know that the systems of weights and measures are called "metric" and "imperial" and that "conversion tables" is what they would have to look up in order to get the information that they needed. a quick check of Google would have taken less time than asking the teacher would have.
The worst thing about the behaviour of these teens is that they were willing to ask the teacher, and thus provide some evidence of their planned illegal activity, rather than think for themselves and find the answers. If schools spent less time teaching the 3 Rs (racism, recycling and reproduction) and brainwashing students about Kyoto and the dangers of Conservative governments and more time teaching them how to take the initiative to solve problems on their own, the world would be a better place to live.
Of course, there is a bright side to this unfortunate saga. Perhaps the war against drugs will be won, not by stricter enforcement or education but by a lack of education. We are raising an entire generation that may lack the skills to successfully package and market banned substances.
and in case there are any students reading this who aspire to become low level drug dealers but lack the knowledge to do so, here is all you have to remember:
One pound equals 16 ounces and 2.2 pounds equals 1 kilograms. That means that there are 35.2 ounces in every kilo. Good luck, kiddies.