Page 407 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Speaking of . . .

Does Drug Education Really Work?

Remember elementary school and the “just say no” cam- have an effect counter to what is intended.” Among the
paign to discourage drug use? It is just one part of a mas- comments from students about such programs, a typical
sive drug education campaign, ranging from Drug Abuse one was “I don’t think handing someone a ribbon saying
Resistance and Education (DARE) to Red Ribbon Weeks, ‘Drug Free Is for Me’ is going to make someone stop using
designed to inoculate youngsters against being persuaded drugs.” In contrast, many students praised presentations by
to try drugs. Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent nation- people suffering from AIDS as something that “really gets
ally on such programs, and the State of California alone to you.”
spends about $400 million annually on drug education. To Brown’s study has not been without its critics, however,
determine if the programs were worth the cost, the Califor- including the California Department of Education, which re-
nia Department of Education commissioned educational re- jected the fi ndings as “signifi cantly fl awed.” Nevertheless,
search consultants at the University of California at Berkeley the facts are that drug use among teens has risen in the
to study the state’s drug education programs. The results past few years despite the expenditures of billions on drug
of the three-year study, completed in 1995, were so contro- education programs.
versial that the Department of Education refused to release If you experienced drug education programs such as
them. They were fi nally published two years later, in 1997, these during your elementary and secondary education,
in the academic journal Education Evaluation and Policy what did you think about their effectiveness? As attempts to
Analysis. The results were shocking to drug educators. Only inoculate youth against the temptation of drugs, were these
15 percent of students found drug education persuasive. efforts persuasive to you and your peers? If not, how could
Nearly 70 percent of the 5,000 students surveyed were ei- they have been made more persuasive?
ther neutral or even negative toward the programs.
According to the study’s lead author, Joel Brown, “Not Source: Peter Hecht, “School Anti-Drug Programs Bashed,”
only are the programs ineffective, but for many youth they Sacramento Bee, 19 March 1997, A1, A12.

something about an audience with a systematic campaign over time. They know
from their expertise and experience that it is both naive and misleading to think
that this persuasive purpose is easily realized with a single speech.

Your Rhetorical Situation

Whatever persuasive purpose you have in mind, it will be mediated by the
rhetorical situation in which you fi nd yourself. Thus, you’ll have to re-evaluate
your purpose as you become better acquainted with your audience and any con-
straints or problems it poses. Thus, let’s briefl y revisit some of the topics we ini-
tially introduced in Chapter 6, beginning with audience diversity.

Cultural Background

Our ability to predict how an audience is likely to respond to our persuasive mes-
sage depends on what we know about the audience ahead of time. Although you
may know little about audience members as individuals, there’s no excuse in this
day and age for knowing little about your audience’s cultural background. This
is especially true for college audiences. If you can fi nd your school’s homepage
it’s a safe bet that you can fi nd information about the cultural diversity of your
campus; for example, geographic origins, fi rst language, and ratio of women to
men. In addition, you have your own experience with the culture of your cam-
374 pus from which you can draw.