I came across a news item on Delfi today that I actually thought must have been a joke. Rather pathetically, it was in earnest.
Tomorrow sees the launch in schools throughout Estonia of the 6th annual Smoke-Free Class competition, in which students and teachers are required to give up smoking for a period of six months in order to be in the running for an all-expenses paid class trip abroad. All very laudable, you might be thinking, as was I at first - until I read that the competition is aimed at students as young as 11.
Now I may be naive, but how many chain-smoking Year 4 students do you know? Health experts claim that there is a serious problem in Estonia with underage tobacco [ab]use, and I can believe it, or at least would if such campaigns were aimed at those, say, 15 and up. But to include those barely into double figures seems a bit over the top for a project that is more cure than prevention. Teachers have expressed their own doubts, concerned that the competition may have the opposite effect to that intended among younger students: arousing their interesting in smoking rather than nipping it in the bud.
Whether or not I am naive, I am definitely a cynic, and had to laugh at the fact that the competition is based entirely on a trust system where participating students sign a class contract promising not to smoke at all during the six-month period. I mean by and large we're talking about teenage boys and girls at their most pliable and irritatingly insubordinate to whom responsibility and maturity are foreign concepts. Entrusting them with anything is risible.
Moreover, where does the lucky class get a free trip to at the end of it all? Amsterdam. Can no one see the irony here? It would be like running an Alcohol-Free Class competition and sending the winners to Oktoberfest.
Tomorrow sees the launch in schools throughout Estonia of the 6th annual Smoke-Free Class competition, in which students and teachers are required to give up smoking for a period of six months in order to be in the running for an all-expenses paid class trip abroad. All very laudable, you might be thinking, as was I at first - until I read that the competition is aimed at students as young as 11.Now I may be naive, but how many chain-smoking Year 4 students do you know? Health experts claim that there is a serious problem in Estonia with underage tobacco [ab]use, and I can believe it, or at least would if such campaigns were aimed at those, say, 15 and up. But to include those barely into double figures seems a bit over the top for a project that is more cure than prevention. Teachers have expressed their own doubts, concerned that the competition may have the opposite effect to that intended among younger students: arousing their interesting in smoking rather than nipping it in the bud.
Whether or not I am naive, I am definitely a cynic, and had to laugh at the fact that the competition is based entirely on a trust system where participating students sign a class contract promising not to smoke at all during the six-month period. I mean by and large we're talking about teenage boys and girls at their most pliable and irritatingly insubordinate to whom responsibility and maturity are foreign concepts. Entrusting them with anything is risible.
Moreover, where does the lucky class get a free trip to at the end of it all? Amsterdam. Can no one see the irony here? It would be like running an Alcohol-Free Class competition and sending the winners to Oktoberfest.
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