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Bridgeburner
Not spiritual at all.




Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 20,010
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Mother warns private schools of the drug dealers on their doorstep
#7484081 - 10/04/07 08:47 AM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article2584678.ece

Middle-class pupils at independent schools are more vulnerable to drug abuse than other children because dealers are grooming young people whom they know to have generous personal allowances from their parents, a conference of elite schools was told yesterday.
Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, whose son Nick Mills killed himself in despair at his heroin addiction four years ago, cautioned members of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) of 250 schools not to be in denial about the dangers of drug use.
“Could it be that one of the significant problems that middle-class youth face in our independent schools is denial that your school could ever have any drug problem, or the foolish belief that cannabis is not that serious?” she said at the conference in Bournemouth. Parents should not think that their children were shielded from the dangers just because they were in the “safe” environment of a fee-paying school, she added.
Her comments coincided with a warning to independent heads that the stress of examinations risked driving pupils to taking drugs, which can trigger serious mental illness.
Mrs Burton-Phillips, who is head of religious education at Godstowe, a preparatory school in Buckinghamshire, has taught in the independent sector for 35 years. Her twin sons, Nick and Simon Mills, attended Prior Park College in Bath and started smoking cannabis at the age of 13 before progressing to Ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, crack and heroin. They did well in their GCSEs at Prior Park College and both started A levels, but were suspended for taking drugs in the first term of the sixth form and dropped out of school soon after. A drug dealer targeted their social group and they were both on heroin within three years of leaving school.
Mrs Burton-Phillips said that a middle-class parent of a child in a fee-paying school had told her: “Of course we are lucky, we don’t have a problem with drugs in our schools in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Eton, because the Queen lives here. This is why we pay our fees.”
Mrs Burton-Phillips, who now tours independent and state-sector schools giving warning of the dangers of drug use, said that such parental complacency risked making pupils at independent schools feel “superior” and giving them a false security in their own ability to be in control of their drug taking. In reality, she said, pupils at fee-paying schools were likely to be in more danger than other children because they had more money.
“It has been my observation that large percentages of pupils in the senior schools feel that drugs cannot touch them. Sometimes they are sadly not grounded in family life, and are ‘compensated’ by having too much money,” she said. “The drug dealers are very aware of this. As one recovering public school cocaine addict recently said to me, ‘the drug dealers simply charge us twice the street price’.”
Anthony Seldon, head of Wellington College, who is patron of the charity that Mrs Burton-Phillips has set up to campaign against drug use, said that the “ideology of testing and examination as the sole criterion of what makes a good school” was driving some youngsters to take drugs. Schools needed to focus on improving the emotional resilience of students, he said, to help them to resist these pressures.
The comments by Mrs Burton- Phillips followed the case of William Jaggs, a former pupil of Harrow School and Oxford university, who was sent to a secure hospital this year for stabbing to death Lucy Brahams, a fashion designer. After the trial, the father of Miss Brahams blamed both institutions for turning a blind eye to the boy’s descent from the “gutter to the sewer”.
The Rev Tim Hastie-Smith, head of Dean Close School in Cheltenham, said that no HMC school was in denial about drugs but agreed that pupils at independent schools were targeted by dealers because they had money. He added that efforts by independent schools to counter the problem were hampered because no head wanted to admit in public that a pupil had been caught with drugs.
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Bridgeburner
Not spiritual at all.




Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 20,010
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Re: Mother warns private schools of the drug dealers on their doorstep [Re: Bridgeburner]
#7485330 - 10/04/07 03:04 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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similar story but with another picture of a drug fiend:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/03/nschools303.xml
 Simon Mills: became an addict after leaving schools. He has vowed to turn his life around
 Nick Mills: his descent into the world of hard drugs after a middle-class upbringing led to him hanging himself
A mother whose privately educated son died after becoming addicted to drugs warned other middle-class parents that their children could be "groomed" by dealers targeting independent schools.
Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, a teacher at an independent school, said the drug dealers were selecting "naive" pupils from affluent homes.
She warned that a generation of middle-class children were living in "denial" that they were safe from drug pushers and said teachers should not bury their "heads in the sand".
In a speech to the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents 250 top independent schools, she said many pupils from wealthy homes had been "compensated" with money, which some spent on drugs.
"I have worked in the independent sector for 35 years," she said. "Large percentages of pupils in the senior schools feel that drugs cannot touch them.
"Sometimes, they are sadly not grounded in family life, and are compensated by having too much money. The drug dealers are very aware of this. As one recovering public school cocaine addict recently said to me, 'The drug dealers simply charge us twice the street price.' The dealers are far from stupid with middle-class school pupils and their families."
She said it was "shocking" that pupils did not know about the "sophisticated grooming techniques used by dealers, to help unsuspecting, naive, wealthy pupils to progress from the fun, or initiation rite, of recreational drugs to a place of despair, decay and death".
Mrs Burton-Phillips, the head of religious education at Godstowe Preparatory School, High Wycombe, told how her twin boys, Nick and Simon, became addicts.
Aged 13, they started smoking cigarettes at while at an independent school. Mrs Elizabeth Burton-Phillips was alerted by school staff after it emerged that they had also taken cannabis. After leaving school, the boys moved on to ecstasy, crack cocaine and heroin.
Three years ago, Nick, aged 27, hanged himself, while Simon vowed to turn his life around.
Mrs Burton-Phillips, who has written a book on her experiences called Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid?, told the conference: "Could it be that one of the significant problems that middle-class youth face in our independent schools is denial that your school could ever have any drug problem or the foolish belief that cannabis is not that serious?"
She called for head teachers to do more to highlight the risk posed by drugs, imposing a zero-tolerance approach to substance misuse.
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wps
Well-PaidScientist


Registered: 09/22/07
Posts: 579
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Re: Mother warns private schools of the drug dealers on their doorstep [Re: Bridgeburner]
#7486048 - 10/04/07 07:00 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
A drug dealer targeted their social group
notice the way they assign blame to the dealers
instead of saying: 'the social group they chose was a bunch of fuckups that actively sought drugs.'
its not your kids' fault, its those EVIL, SCUMBAG DRUG DEALERS
give me a fucking break
if I ever get a DUI, I'm gonna tell the officer:
'Hey, its not my fault! That bartender TARGETED MY SOCIAL GROUP.'
-------------------- "America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve." - Tom Morello
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Varman
Stranger




Registered: 07/16/06
Posts: 168
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
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Re: Mother warns private schools of the drug dealers on their doorstep [Re: wps]
#7486317 - 10/04/07 08:08 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Hey, its not my fault! That bartender TARGETED MY SOCIAL GROUP.
lmao
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"Its A circular vortex..."
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