Whether adults like it or not, children dwell part of the time in a fantasy world, and their attention sometimes is focused more ardently on the adventures of such characters as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than on messages from parents or teachers.
It is a fact that J. Laurence Day and his colleagues not only accept but put to advantage in educating youth about the dangers of drug abuse. Their tool is a time-honored institution among the young: the comic book.Brother Day, a member of the Pensacola 1st Ward, Pensacola Florida Stake, is professor of communication arts at the University of West Florida.
An idea that has resulted in a set of nine anti-drug comic books directed toward inner-city youth was conceived in 1988 by H. Ned Seelye. He is a nationally recognized expert in cross-cultural communication and education, with whom Day had worked on dozens of research projects over 30 years.
According to Day's account the idea grew out of a conversation Seelye had with a person in the U.S. Department of Education. Asked his opinion on a proposed brochure designed to fight drug abuse among children, he said, "It looks pretty boring to me; I don't think kids would read it on their own."
Asked what he would do differently, he replied: "How about a comic book? You could have an anti-drug storyline. You could have exciting characters. You could have action or humor or both."
Late that year, Day said, Seelye began to pursue his idea, writing a proposal to the Department of Education for a grant to research and develop prototype anti-drug comic books in English and Spanish for at-risk youth in the fourth through the eighth grades.
Requiring sponsorship and support from a non-profit institution, Seelye contacted his long-time colleague, Larry Day, who put the university's muscle behind the proposal.
The grant was approved in early June 1989.
"In the meantime," Day said, "we worked to find comic book artists we could afford with a relatively limited budget. Mainly through word of mouth, we assembled a staff of young artists with a diversity of cultures, including Black, Hispanic and Apache Indian. We tried to get artists who would give us their creative work in a manner that kids in the intended age groups could identify with. We got a broad spectrum of artistic technique."
As soon as the grant was approved, the artists assembled in Pensacola and set to work. In a workshop, a drug education specialist gave them the type of messages that should be communicated to youth, such as courage to withstand peer pressure.
These messages were cast in the surreal, melodramatic, often bizarre story lines that typify today's comic books that appeal to youngsters. They include:
- The Edge, a graphic presentation of the consequences of drug use, created through consultation with teenage inmates of a drug rehabilitation center.
- Dark Warrior, a tale of warriors and wizards in which the hero, "by standing up for his beliefs, no matter what" overcomes a tyrant who seeks to enslave people with a crack-like substance.
- Escape Velocity, a story about skate boarding on a giant space station, which delivers a lesson about the deadly effects of drug use on one's coordination.
- Off the Block, designed to expose the dead-end world of teenage drug pushers while informing young people about the effects of LSD, marijuana, Quaaludes and crack, four of the major drugs on urban streets.
- La Fe, a stark, action-packed story about neighborhood drug pushers and the grim consequences of drug use.
- Mongani Comes to the Mountain, which uses traditional Apache Indian designs to tell a metaphorical story in which people learn that trading their harvest for a stranger's magic seeds can lead to unforeseen losses they cannot bear.
- Skeets, a story in which a ferret, mole, porcupine, bat and mouse help each other learn of the dangers of alcohol and diet-pill abuse.
- Stout Ninja, featuring a wise old Ninja warrior, designed to teach elementary-school-age children the effects of inhalants by helping them distinguish between "the good and bad odors of life," and showing them how to ask for help and be a source of positive peer pressure for their friends.
- Mouse, a futuristic space adventure in which a young boy's friends and "the four rings of power," - knowledge, reason, courage and truth - save him from addiction and death.
The comic books are printed in black-and-white; they may be used as coloring books. Day said they are designed to stand alone or be used in conjunction with other school curricula.
Nearly 100,000 comic books were sent to schools and drug education centers where at-risk children and their teachers used them in conjunction with Drug Awareness Month last October.
Are they effective?
"It's pretty early to tell," Day said. "The grant was pretty tightly structured, and we didn't have the funds for follow-up research. But we got a lot of good responses, strictly spontaneous, that indicated kids are using them and that they are effective."- R. Scott Lloyd