thINK 1: Survey. Shmurvey. Nobody takes those seriously.

Last week, my 2B AP English 12 class had to fill out a 150 question drug and violence survey. As you probably can imagine, there was a lot of groaning and complaining.

When I was younger, we took these surveys and I remember some kids in my class would fill out the worst possible answers even though they weren't bad kids. Laughing all the way to the end of the survey, they would get to the question: "How honest were you in filling out this survey?" Of course you know they are going to mark the choice "very honest." So with this said, why take these surveys? I know there are some kids that do answer the questions honestly, but the survey and end statistics are a joke in the end because some weren’t honest.

So how can you get these questions answered privately with honest answers? The answer: You really can’t. Unless... there was a one-on-one session with each student in every school in Arkansas, but that is highly unrealistic.

I, personally, think that the survey is not very efficient. The questions get answered truthfully and not truthfully, but what can the survey and statistics do about the problems that arise in kids anyway? Kids that are making bad choices are still going to make bad choices because of their peers and maybe even their parents. There has been and always will be pressure on kids to just be included in the world. A survey is not going to fix anything.