Schools: Introduction

Children draw conclusions about alcohol use largely from what they see and hear at school, especially from their friends and classmates. Youth who believe that alcohol use is the norm accepted by their peers are at greatest risk for experimentation with alcohol and becoming regular drinkers at an early age. Prevention efforts are most effective when they change students' beliefs about the prevalence and acceptability of alcohol use among their peers. Thus, whatever your role in the educational field — teacher, principal, health educator, school nurse, coach, or guidance counselor — you can play an important part in preventing underage drinking by promoting prevention efforts and anti-use norms in your school.

Schools can play an important role in preventing underage alcohol use and should be included in all comprehensive, community-based efforts to reduce teen drinking. There is a wide range of activities that schools can undertake to prevent underage drinking, including teaching students alcohol refusal skills and creating and enforcing school policies on alcohol use. Although their role often does not directly focus on reducing underage access to alcohol, schools can and should play a part in reducing access on school property and in the community.

To help promote your school’s involvement in preventing underage drinking, consider the following questions*:

• Has your school or community assessed student drinking to determine the extent of the problem?
• Do you know what factors may be contributing to student drinking in your school or community (e.g., easy access to alcohol, peer pressure, adults' failure to address the issue)?
• Do you know what steps, if any, are being taken within your school system to help kids resist the pressure to drink?
• Is your school currently working to educate parents about alcohol use among children?
• Does your school have an active partnership with the families of its students?

*These questions are adapted from Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free, a coalition of Governors’ spouses, Federal agencies, and public and private organizations. Leadership is a national effort that specifically targets prevention of drinking in the 9- to 15-year-old age group. http://www.alcoholfreechildren.org/