Recess Monkey was somewhat shocked to hear about Ruth Kelly’s endorsement of random drug testing in schools - but then I realised she was referring to the pupils, not the staff.
Yet that raises a serious point. If you make every child, regardless of however well behaved they are, subject to random drug testing - without any test of probable cause - then you are telling them from that young age that they are all potential criminals.

Conversely, those children see their teachers, however badly behaved they are and regardless of probable cause, not being tested for drugs. If rolled out nationally, this policy would seem designed to alienate young people from society rather than instil into them some responsibility for and membership of a community.

Furthermore, such random drug testing puts education staff in a difficult position. How do students know that they have been selected at random? How can they feel comfortable going to a teacher for help if they have a drug problem? How does a pupil know they are not the victim of a vindictive teacher? Are teaching staff equipped to take on a quasi-judicial role?

We have to remember that a person’s rights are valuable, even if they can’t vote - in fact, more so as they depend on others to protect their rights for them.

Random drug testing in schools may be worthwhile but legislators should take care to build in to such a system the means to rectify the damage that it would do. Make the testing applicable to staff as well as pupils. Give the responsibility for selecting those to be tested and the administration of such tests to an outside agency - and most of all, only make such a regime applicable to those who can vote - even if it means lowering the age of majority, so that teenagers may have the opportunity to endorse such a policy or not in a way that might focus the minds of politicians seeking easy solutions to intractable problems - through the ballot box.

editor[at]recessmonkey.com