According to the World Bank Ukrainian children are the biggest smokers and drinkers in Europe. Viktor Yanukovych also recently confirmed this. Its clear something should have been done long ago, but at present the situation is critical. According to the Institute for Demography and Social Studies, every fourth boy is at risk of not living to see his pension. Alcohol abuse is one of the key problems sharply increasing the death rate among men: according to the demographic researchers, men between 28 and 42 are four times more likely to die than women. According to the World Health Organization, 40 percent of Ukrainians from 14 to 18 drink alcohol, including vodka. But campaigning is not enough. This strategy already failed in Soviet times. Philosophers and psychologists say that the things you fight against only become stronger. You have to fight for something, not against. Perhaps this “for” can be found in the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports’ new program “Family conversation,” a kind of anti-alcohol campaign for schools.
Meanwhile, only seventh grade students will be told about the harmfulness of strong drinks. As it is a pilot project, it won’t be launched in all schools at once, but only in 210 educational institutions of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Donetsk. The program provides education for children in the form of trainings and meetings with parents, with class teachers, social workers and psychologists present during the lessons.
“The essence of the program is that we will not tell the children: you cannot drink beer, vodka or wine. We emphasize that a person has to make a conscious choice, knowing the consequences of taking alcohol and differentiating strong drinks by the degree of danger to the human organism,” says Yurii Lutsenko, the research officer at the Ukrainian Scientific-Methodological Center for Practical Psychology and Social Work of the Academy of Educational Sciences and the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports. “What should there conscious choice be in favor of? In favor of a healthy lifestyle and all the benefits that it gives. Sports, training in sport sections and groups are a great alternative to alcohol. While visiting our lessons, the children have to make such a conclusion for themselves. This won’t be an ordinary dry lesson with everyone sitting and listening to the teacher. This is going to be an active dialog, where children will be shown different illustrative examples, experiments and pictures, and they will see what happens to the human organism because of alcohol abuse. It means that the program will be taught in the form of training lessons, as it is known that people get almost 90 percent of their information through hearing, seeing and experiencing it themselves. It is important for us that a child learns to say ‘no’ and to model its behavior in the social environment, which will increase the probability of displaying such models of behavior in a crisis situation — so the child will know how to say ‘no’ when being offered to drink alcohol.”
The “Family conversation” program is not the government’s first attempt to solve the problem of teenage drinking. And it is good that it doesn’t emphasize a prohibition on alcoholic beverages. Experience shows that any methods based on total prohibition are always ineffective. For example, exactly a year ago the Verkhovna Rada passed a bill banning to sell beer and soft drinks to underage persons. But it did not say who would control this measure, or what sanctions there would be; thus, few believed in its effectiveness. This year the Kyiv municipal administration proposed to forbid the sale of alcoholic drinks and tobacco in kiosks (many of them are located near schools); the bottles of beer are still on their shop windows. There was a period when a curfew for teenagers was established in Ivano-Frankivsk and Zhytomyr; Kyiv also wanted to adopt such a practice. This was done in order to limit access to strong drinks and to reduce the level of teenage crime. However, these prohibitions also had no effect.
It is very good that the course involves parents, as teenage alcoholism is a family issue, hence the name “Family conversation.” Why are children attracted to alcohol and drugs? The explanation is quite simple: children do not have anything else to do, they have no other space for self-affirmation (sports, creativity, tourism), and they lack mature reasoning. Hence the difficult relationships with their parents and resulting stress. This all has to come out, only it must be done properly. The researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the Academy of Educational Sciences Borys Lazorenko stated in his study “Factors of distribution of alcohol and drug addiction among the school youth” that 52 percent of pupils and 56 percent of vocational schools students consider family problems and quarrels as a reason for alcohol abuse. Also, 68 percent of this category points to “a desire to elate and cheer up,” while 71 percent mentions the need to relax and forget about problems. Why are young people so down? The very same “family problems.” This was the answer of 65 percent of school youth and 58 percent of vocational schools students. Young people also dislike “the gray routine, unpleasant daily trivia” (28 and 34 percent, respectively).
The numbers pertaining to frequency are also quite telling. Pupils answered the question “Have you ever been under alcohol intoxication?” the following way: “many times” – almost 14 percent, “several times” – 42 percent, “only once” – 18 percent, “never” — 25 percent. By the way, this is two-year-old data, and it is worse than the data for 2006: at that time, 31 percent of pupils had never been drunk.
As Lazorenko wrote, “difficult relations with parents and a tense atmosphere at home is noted by a half of all respondents from the school youth. It is clear that the need to reduce stress and cheer up closely correlates with these factors.” Similar tendencies are noted in the young people’s motives to take drugs.
The reason is that parents don’t know how and can’t organize their children’s leisure (but the state doesn’t help), and children have a natural energy and potential that needs to come out. If there is no normal communication, no display of love and care, scandal will ensue (at least some release of energy); if there is no sport (self-perfection, self-affirmation), there will be alcohol; if there is no creativity (self-expression, revealing potential), there will be pursuit of thrilling senses. Prohibition will not achieve anything. Psychologists confirm that present-day children are not like their obedient elders. Children want cooperation with adults, equal communication, trusting relations, but people have to develop these things in their families every day, and adults are responsible for this. The problem is global, as the old principles of bringing up children are no longer valid, and we ourselves have to mature to the new ones.
“The inability to accept and realize the right decisions concerning different life situations, the absence of proper understanding with parents and proper family support from their side leads school youth to alcohol and drugs abuse. The aggravation of these problems causes an increase in frequency of taking alcohol and drugs,” writes Lazorenko. In order to address this situation both society and the state are in for a lot of work, including a few key steps: limit alcohol advertisement, popularize sport and organize the children’s leisure. Together with their parents, of course.
Regarding the project itself, the Ukrainian Scientific-Methodical Center for Practical Psychology and Social Work does not give absolute guarantees that all children will give up alcohol forever, but it believes that 80 percent will begin to treat alcohol more thoughtfully. We will find out whether the new program is successful at the end of the summer, when the pilot project will be over. Then a polling of schoolchildren will be conducted. They will be asked about what they liked in the program and what they didn’t; if their behavior has changed, if the amount of alcohol they take has been reduced etc. The conclusions on the program’s effectiveness will be based on the results of the poll. If it is, from next year the anti-alcohol classes will be taught in all educational institutions of Ukraine.
