WEST Van actress Betty Phillips
under the spotlight.

November 1, 1989 News 985-2132 Classified 986-6222 Distribution 986-1337 56 pages 25¢

RESEARCHER REVEALS STARTLING STATISTICS TO SCHOOL BOARD

WV parents told that youth
have cocaine, sex problems

SOME WEST VANCOUVER young people are heavily into
cocaine, 50 per cent of B.C.’s Grade 7 children drink
alcoho! regularly, and 50 per cent of B.C.’s Grade 11 stu-
dents are ‘‘sexually experienced,’’ West Vancouver parents
and school trustees were toid Monday.

TREVOR KINSEY (centre) and some friends build a tower out of books at the launch
of West Vancouver Memoriai Library’s Special Edition Capital Campaign. Games and
entertainment were part ef the fund-raising campaign kickoff Sunday at the library.
The library hopes to raise $4.75 million to expand facilities. See story, page 3.

Carol Munro, an_ education
researcher and CBC broadcaster,
told the school board meeting that
33 per cent of West Vancouver’s
18 to 25-year-olds have tried co-
caine and that 77 per cent of these
will try it again.

One in four Grade 7 children in
B.C. “thinks at one time or
another about suicide,”’ 20 per
cent of Grade 11's in B.C. say they
have had six or more sexual! part-
ners, and fully 11,000 students
dropped out of B.C. high schools
in the last school year, Munro
said, drawing on her own research
and citing a 1988 study by Queen’s
University in Ontario.

Munro used the statistics, and
tapes of her own conversations
with B.C. teenagers, to illustrate
her lecture on the massive changes
in the Canadian social culture, the
tapid fragmentation of traditional
values, and the role of parents as
the ‘generation gap‘ grows wider
than ever before.

“There is a social earthquake
going on in B.C.,’’ Munro told the
packed boardroorn, ‘‘and the maps
we carry in our heads don’t lead to
the old destinations any more.’”

Munro pointed out that most
parents of today’s school-age
children are ‘‘war babies.’’ These
parents grew up in the stable 1950s
when two-parent families were the
norm and Canada was a

By PATRICK RAYNARD
Contributing Writer

‘Ten per cent of the kids I talk-
ed to are living on their own while
going to high school, and
Canada-wide statistics show that
10 per cent of couples are living
common-law and [6 per cent of

CEREAL
“Ten per cent of the kids
I talked to are living on
their own while going to
high school, and Canada-
wide statistics show that
10 per cent of couples
are living common-law
and 16 per cent of
children are born
illegitimate. ”’

— Education researcher

Caral Munro

children are born illegitimate,"
Munro told the stunned parents
and trustees.

West Vancouver schools super-
intendent Doug Player told parents
they should not delude themselves
into thinking that most of these
things were only happening outside
of West Vancouver.

‘When I was a principal in this

PAS
YOUTH DRUG PROBLEM: SEE NEWS VIEWPOINT, PAGE 6
AT Yen

predcminanily British and Euro-
pean culture.

But it is often the divorced
and/or alcoholic parents of this
same generation who are at the
root of the tow self-esteem that
leads their children to early
pregnancies, drugs and alcohol,
and an increasing willingness to
escape through suicide, Munro’s
interviews indicated.

Realtors.

school district I once got called out
in the middle of a Friday night to
help parents rescue a daughter
from committing suicide,”’ Player
recounted.

“And I recently attended a
meeting with the West Vancouver
Police, together with our three
high school principals, to discuss
the use of crack in our high
schools,’' Player said.

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WN. , Shore property