There is Good News Tonight!

“There is good news tonight!”  The older generation will recognize that famous line from a radio broadcast of yesteryear.  You have to be looking for and open to possibilities to see good news today.  No, it is not that it is not there, but our cynicism and the media focusing on the bad news makes it difficult.

 One of those little nuggets presented itself the other day.  A government program announced that after $15 million in hard earned taxpayer money an effort to stop kids from smoking , it had failed.  Yes, failed!  The details.   After 14 years this program found that the effort did not make any change in the number of kids that eventually took up smoking. 

So where is the good news?  There is abundant good news in the story if you search.  Yes, $15 million dollars is gone.  According to the story all the time taken away from learning something else has been lost.  You might think that the kids have said “yadda, yadda,  yadda” to the effort!  And you might think that all the effort went down the drain.  

 And you would be wrong.  The first part of the good news is that a government agency measured itself and found itself lacking and in a word, FAILED and admitted it!   Great!  This is so much better than plowing on in the face of failure and responding with $20 million on the same path.  How many times have you heard; “Oh, if we just had more money we could do the job.”  

So the good news here is the fact that the program is examining itself.  Perhaps on further examination the expectations were too high.  In a society that has been drenched in advertising and TV programs that seem so say that smoking is ok, and add to that the fact that after a couple of packs a smoker may be hooked by the drug, you are up against a formidable enemy.  

Assuming the message of the program is correct the best course may be just to keep pounding away.  Society is changing on smoking.  More and more messages are slammed up against the smoker AND it IS working.  There is less smoking in adults now.  Lest we forget… Kids look to us as role models.  They do as they see, not so much as they are told.

 Another program that is gaining strength is the “no sex until marriage” effort.  You can easily say that that message is set up for failure just like the stop smoking effort.  Again society glorifies sex, in any way and with anybody, anywhere.  Add to this mix is the fact that it is the most interesting, pleasurable, complex of human activities and the program is just ripe for failure.  A lot of people say that that is just unreasonable with today’s kids.  You have to accept the fact that it is and will happen, you have to just accept it, adjust our standards and make the best of it and teach “safe sex”. 

We all can agree that the message is right.  It is the best idea to abstain until marriage.  It is good for the boy and the girl, and it is good for society and it is certainly good for the baby that comes into this world in a committed relationship of a mom and dad – husband and wife. 

So are we going to stop teen-age smoking and sex?  No, but education in many cases is for the few.  There are those that will not smoke and will not have sex until marriage no matter how many programs or if there are no programs.  The opposite is true.  No matter how many times the message is hammered home some will smoke and some will have sex before the right time.   They will hear the message, but are not ready to respond.  After seeing the consequences of wrong behavior they may respond.  But they never will respond correctly unless the message has been presented.  If the message has been watered down as in “if you must, do it responsibly” is that the message we want them to heed?  That is like going to a car dealer with a price in mind and immediately going half way toward the dealer’s price and then starting the negotiations.  

In every school there will be a few respond, they will get the message, they will heed the message, they will not smoke, they will not have sex until marriage and they will be the ones that we should be aiming at with the right message.

 So, the good news is that the right message is being put out.  We may have to be more innovative in the presentation, we may have to look for different ways to present it, but if the message is right, keep doing it.  Yes results are important, but let’s not water down the message to get results.  That is a self-defeating proposition.