Article April 14, 1997 Issue

What's your backup?

Don Soule

BACK in the sixties when I was teaching in a junior high school, our community experienced a flood of drug problems. Dealers enlisted the aid of students to push drugs on campus, and this problem seemed impossible to cure.

Every Monday morning when we came to school, a scene of utter chaos greeted us. Lockers were open, and books and papers were scattered, blowing in the wind. It was most distressing. I was depending on prayer and a conviction that man is spiritual to keep from accepting this as an unchangeable reality. In my classroom there was no evidence of any drugs, but what went on outside of it didn't seem to be improving.

One afternoon when I was introducing some new material and explaining it to the class, I suddenly realized that I was talking to myself. All the students were distracted by something they could see that was taking place outside the room. I was about to comment on their inattentiveness, when a girl sitting next to the windows asked me if I was going to put up with that—referring to the scene they were all watching. A young man and woman were systematically going down the corridor with a tire iron and breaking into the lockers looking for drug stashes.

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