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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Conf Robert Robertson Director of Education Alcoholism.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-conf-robert-robertson-director-of-education-alcoholism.mp3 Duration: 00:27:15
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The first speaker is, in fact, particularly well defined because this is his professional field, Dr. Robert Robinson, the Director of Education for Ontario Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation. He heads a division with staff members that devote themselves professionally to this very topic. I had a few moments before the meeting to clarify this thing because I was told when I first saw his brochure that he was connected with ARF, A-R-F.
I thought for the moment that it had to do with a dog foundation, but it turns out that that's the style of modern abbreviation. This is the Alcohol Research Foundation. This is Mr. Robinson. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you and put the controls of the blinker lights in the confident hands of Beth Robinson. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I always feel a little bit on the outside in situations like this when I have to address you or any group of AA as ladies and gentlemen.
I always feel a little bit envious. I really can't fully participate. I really can't fully participate in your fellowship. I don't know whether I could go through the rigorous initiation process. That remains to be seen. I was thrown a little a few minutes ago when I came up on the platform with Dr. Bacon and Dr. Dole and Sister Mary Andrew and said, now who's going to go in what order, who's first, and so on.
I thought I had covered this situation rather neatly by suggesting that we might follow an alphabetical order, you see. I thought, well, my name starts with an R. Bacon starts with a B. Sister Mary Andrew comes in between. I would wind up with the last word. But it was a little bit too clever. What they did, they said, all right, alphabetical A-R-F, Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, and there I am.
I was thrown further when I looked at the lineup here on the blue sheets and saw that you were talking about the fellowship's responsibility in alcoholism education. That much I knew. That much I was more or less prepared for. And then I see there's another phrase added, and how it is meeting it. And how AA is meeting its responsibility in alcoholism education. Well, there are a couple of things we're going to have to define if we're going to be able to communicate with each other.
And I do hope this is a process of communication. That means, Dr. Dole, that means that we each learn from the other and from our experience together. The specific reference here is to alcoholism education. Now, I guess it's your fifth tradition, is it not, that speaks of carrying the message to other suffering alcoholics. This is clearly to do with alcoholism education. Now, the education of the foundation, in our view, is a little broader, perhaps a little earlier than that.
We would suggest that the alcoholism kind of education, which seeks to intervene in a process of alcoholism already begun, that this is really prevention, preventive education on a secondary level. Certainly extremely important. Extremely important when one considers the vast numbers of alcoholics in Ontario. There are 100,000 in round figures. The vast numbers across Canada and across the United States and elsewhere in the world.
It's certainly very important to reach these individuals. And I think that your fellowship carries this message better than any other group. Not just by virtue of your numbers either. By virtue of the quality of your feeling and the quality of your understanding.
[00:05:04]
To go back a piece then to the, what might be called primary prevention, as distinct from this secondary or intervening kind. Primary prevention as we would see it, and I hope you would agree with me, would be the attempt to obviate the development of alcohol problems before they have begun. And this of course carries this directly into the reaching of young people. Now there are a lot of arguments as to the best method, the best place, the best motivational channel to follow for reaching young people.
There are even arguments about what age at which this kind of education should be begun. I can really only tell you something of what we do in this province and why we do it. And it will be for you to take what you like from this, take what seems to be applicable in your situation, and all that I say is not equally applicable throughout the U.S., throughout other parts of the world, I know this. We have to decide on how, where, when to reach these people, not why.
We know why because we want to do what we can to prevent the development of very serious problems arising out of the misuse of alcohol, not arising exclusively out of the alcohol, arising also out of the vulnerable personality, the emotional makeup of the individual character, and also the society in which we all try to operate more or less successfully, more or less comfortably. Well, here we felt that the school has a relatively important place in the scheme of things, in the scheme of preventive education.
I do not say that the school has the entire job to do. I wouldn't agree with this. For my money, parents, parents have the number one responsibility. I don't believe that all parents are equally equipped to handle this, but they do have the responsibility. They take it unto themselves when they conceive a child, and they should be well aware of this. And this doesn't mean proscribing the use of alcohol.
It means, I should say, fitting the individual child, growing individual, fitting this person comfortably into the context of that particular family's and community's way of life, without the necessity of depending on some kind of chemical comfort. We use this term, chemical comfort. Now, I place the number one responsibility on the parents, but they need backing up. They need facts. They need some supporting basis.
And there, I think, the school can play a very important part. When I think this should be this topic of alcohol education, which is broadening out, mind you, from alcoholism education, I think that this has to get to the young person at about the time that alcohol is beginning to get to the young person. This varies. This varies greatly in different cultures, in different parts of this very city it varies, because we have a large Italian section, we have a large German section, we have a fair-sized Ukrainian, Finnish, et cetera, et cetera.
And this may be a different matter in all these different settings. Therefore, I cannot agree with the ridiculous kind of law that says at a particular age, be it 21 or be it 18 in New York State and some of the other states, different variations on this, that at some magic arbitrary age, a person is equipped to make a decision and to handle a substance that is potentially dangerous. I think it's a little late to start focusing at age 21 or age 18.
I think that it would be very useful if the schools, before young people start dropping out of the school system, as they do, as they do in this province substantially toward the end of grade 9,
[00:10:00]
it may be different where you live, but toward the end of grade 9 we lose something like 20 percent of the young people in our secondary school system. And before that point, and about at that time, when they're beginning to experiment with alcohol, it's very useful to them to understand something about this substance and how it works and how it affects our behavior, our judgment, the way we think, the way we act, what we say.
So I think the schools have a very important role there. Now, what about AA in relation to this? I was up at our summer course at Carleton University for the past two weeks. We had a presentation, a very excellent presentation, on AA and by AA. We had both kinds, and I think this was important to achieve perspective. We had a non-AA clinical psychologist who was with our London branch for the last 12 years or so see it, look at the fellowship and the way it functions from the outside.
And we had a demonstration that evening with a panel of three AA members. The panel did an excellent job. Following the panel, we broke down into small groups and there were eight or ten of our course participants sitting around tables with coffee and donuts with a couple of AA members. I had to bite my tongue at the group I was sitting in. I had to bite my tongue sharply, and eventually I didn't trust myself, so I moved to another group.
Because what I was hearing was a recommendation from a couple of these individuals. I recognize that AA comprises individuals. It does not have a party line, as it were. But I was getting from these individuals the recommendation that AA members selected, all right, selected, but AA members should, I would use the word invade, invade the classroom, invade the school auditorium, and talk about their subject as they know it to the students.
I cannot agree with this on two grounds. In the first place, I cannot agree that anyone has the right to invade the area where the professionally qualified teacher operates. I certainly would not seek to invade a doctor's office and operate there or the operating room of a hospital or any other such special place. School is a very special place, and teachers are very specially trained people, and a teacher builds up a rapport, a give-and-take communication process with young people.
It seems to me that any outsider, be it a well-intentioned and well-informed and intelligent and thoroughly competent member of AA, if this person intervenes in the classroom situation, I don't agree with this. I know this will raise arguments. I know that some of you are doing these things, and perhaps you're doing a darn good job on it. But theoretically and on the long haul, I think it's better if we supply, you and we, our foundation, assisted by the experience of AA, supply the ammunition to the teachers and let the teachers do the job.
Now, not all teachers do a good job. I'm quite prepared to admit this, and I'm quite prepared to be pretty patient. I understand some people are not patient, particularly in carrying the message. I'm quite prepared to wait a generation for this thing to evolve. I know, I know from the actual experience of our foundation working with the Ontario Department of Education, with the school systems around the province, that teachers are taking more interest all the time and are equipping themselves more adequately to meet the need of young people in this respect.
I know it's not perfect. Someday it will be a lot better, and I think this is what we should work toward. Now, the other thing is a more specific feeling about an AA person coming in and talking about his or her subject in the classroom. His or her subject I take to be a personal experience with alcoholism. This is what the AA fellowship, as I understand it, equips one to do. Well, I remember Father Frederick Lawrence, who I think is addressing an Al-Anon meeting over at the other hotel this morning.
We were on a panel down in Rhode Island, I think it was, some years ago with a group of secondary school teachers. We were discussing this whole matter, and the question came, how much should we discuss alcoholism with young people in the classroom? Alcoholism with young people in the classroom, and I remember Father Lawrence's reply very well.
[00:15:03]
I think I remember it for a highly personal reason, as you will note between the reflection of the lights and the words I would use. Father Lawrence said that it was about as sensible to talk about alcoholism to people in their early teens as it was to talk to them about getting bald, losing their hair, and getting false teeth. These were things that were not realities within their experience. Now alcohol is a reality within the experience of young people. Alcoholism is fortunately only within the experience of a minority of young people in their own home situation, and in that situation which is rather special, I believe that a competent guidance counselor can be of inestimable help.
So I don't think it's appropriate for AA to invade the classroom, and you can take issue with me as you will. This leads me in these rather rambling and discursive remarks to another area. Now the history of the foundation has been one of cooperation with AA from the very beginning. Any of the Ontario people here will be very familiar with this. Our foundation came about because of an act of legislation enacted by the provincial government in 1949.
I would submit that in all probability one of the strongest forces that brought about the framing and passing of this legislation was the activity of a number of AA members in and around the places of power in this province. So we owe a lot in the very beginning to AA, and up through the years there has been a tremendous demonstration of cooperation. I think other people will testify to this. We've had individual differences at times, but then we are individuals. We have our idiosyncrasies. Surely we have our rights to disagree a little bit and argue a little bit and work things out together.
That's the important thing. We've worked things out together. Now on a number of occasions in our public education work, as distinct from our alcohol education work in the school system, in our public education work, I personally have been deeply indebted to individual members of AA. I wish I could have been with you yesterday afternoon for your discussion of the the mass media and radio and television, all that sort of thing, because it's in this area that I have personally profited tremendously from the ready cooperation of individual members.
They have helped us with the preparation of scripts, with the planning of scripts for television and for radio and for motion pictures. They have helped us even in the producing and directing and even at times in some of our films that we've done at the foundation itself. They've helped us by taking time off from work and acting a part anonymously, don't worry, anonymously in the film. They've helped us in the printed media. Some of you may be familiar with what a few years ago was regarded as a transgression, almost a desecration of the educational process. We introduced Horrors, a comic book dealing with alcoholism.
I might say it took about five years to fight that through our board. They were a little bit stodgy, but it's paid off. We're past a million and a half copies on that particular comic book. We're into our second comic book now. And in the preparation of these, let me say that I am very much indebted to a couple of your members, particularly. Who helped develop the artwork and with the whole process. But before I finish that little statement, let me add something to it.
Let me say this, and I think this little example perhaps will demonstrate the whole point of my remarks. The way we did this comic book, both these comic books, was for me to prepare a rough script of the various possible frames, the various possible pages in the booklet, and pass this over to my friend in AA, who has an art studio, and he took it from there. Then he would bring back the roughs to me. And in both cases, and I've told him this, so
[00:20:00]
we don't fight about it anymore. In both cases, these things came back to me. I had very carefully taken out the loaded words. I had very carefully gotten down off the soapbox. I had very carefully tried not to appear as though I were crusading. I tried to be calm. I tried to be objective. I tried to be certainly interested, but not so involved that I lost sight of the fact that alcoholism, big a problem as it is, is only one problem in our society.
Serious as it is, there are other serious problems, too. I tried to keep balance and perspective in this thing, and it came back to me in both cases with the balance and perspective, I should say, distorted. And I would say the distortion was quite involuntary. I don't think it was deliberate at all. I think that anybody who has felt, anybody who has been so involved in the problem himself or herself, cannot possibly achieve the kind of balance and perspective that I believe is necessary in reaching the total population.
So at the same time, there is a strength and a weakness. At the same time, there is a tremendous advantage and a disadvantage in having a member of AA carry the message, not of alcoholism to other suffering alcoholics, no, to carry any message having to do with the prevention of alcohol problems to all people, users and non-users of alcohol alike. Now in fairness, I hope there will be some nodding heads. There are a few rather glowering looks out there.
Fortunately, I am short-sighted. I cannot see them all. But I feel strongly about this. There's got to be a balance. And what this recommends to me is simply this, that the ideal arrangement is a partnership, the partnership arrangement, in which each part is indispensable to the other, in which there is a complementary working together and reinforcing of each other's efforts. We would not, absolutely not, we, the foundation, would not be where we are in coping with this problem today in this province without AA. I suggested to you that the foundation might not even exist without AA.
I do not think that is entirely an exaggeration. But acknowledging all this, I think that it is very important to to bring the other part to bear and to achieve the balance in the presentation. We used to talk and argue about the old-line temperance crusaders, hmm? Capital T temperance. There's been a lot of furor, a lot of heat generated around this topic, and maybe I'd be much better advised to keep my mouth shut about it.
However, I feel that I am among friends. And I feel that some of you at least will share some of my feelings about the exaggerations, the lack of balance, the distortions, involuntary, I suggest. I do not believe, I do not believe for a moment that these kinds of distortions were deliberate, were contrived, and and it came about in that fashion. Rather, do I feel that when one is caught up emotionally in a position, it is extremely difficult, it is impossible, most times, to draw back far enough to see oneself sitting, standing, acting in that position.
Therefore, my main thesis this morning is simply this, that both of us have an important role to fulfill in the development of a preventive program. Preventive, not only of alcoholism, but of the multitude of other complications of life, if you will. I get kind of sick of the word problem. Let's call them complications. I'm overpowered by social workers and psychiatrists, and you know, so I hear about problems all day long. Then I go home, I hear about problems, huh?
However, I think the important thing is that we have a joint responsibility, and that we can talk to each other, and that we can work together. And at the risk of running under my time, heaven forbid, I know the other speakers won't do that. I know the other speakers won't do that. Selden tells me he's got 40 minutes on paper, and that's good for an hour anyway.
[00:25:00]
But at the risk of doing this, and at the risk of not saying all the things I had expected to say to you this morning, let me just reiterate two points. It's important that we work together, that we talk together, that we communicate both ways all along the line, and in a continuing fashion. A.A. and all the professional people who are engaged in working toward the same objective that you people are. That's number one.
Number two, and I haven't mentioned this before, I did mention parental responsibility in the education of young people, but the most important aspect of this responsibility, which let's extend not just to parents, but to all adults, the most important aspect of this teaching method is the example that we as adults, as responsible adults, demonstrate to young people. This is it, and your example in A.A. has been a tremendous educational force. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing with us the truly professional experience you've had in this field. If I listen, I feel that Mr. Robbins has opened up what is probably a nicely arguable point, namely how effective is it to carry the mission to young people? I must confess that my feelings were somewhat divided, and I wasn't entirely persuaded in his argument until he remarked that the problem of discussing alcoholism to young people and teenagers would be like that of discussing the dangers and problems of baldness to teenagers.
At that point, Dr. Bacon and I felt he had struck a rather unfair blow. It made it effectively, and unless some subsequent speaker can refute the point, I take it as established.