I haven't been in public school in a long time, so I don't know if they actually do this, but if they don't, do you think it'd be a good idea, and affordable, if safety and/or public safety courses became mandatory in school? Maybe somewhere in the area of 4th or 5th grade; Maybe a bit younger.

Basically teach them very basic things: How to tell if someone is suspicious; Yell "Fire" instead of "Help" if someone grabs you; Don't run away or go into an unpopulated area; Don't hitchike. Maybe have them watch a documentary on some of these dangers or, and I mean this seriously, have them watch some UM episodes in class--Since the murders and missing person's cases are based on factual events, they not only are "accessible" in that they're not dull, but they have an impact both entertainment wise and emotionally (as in, they scare most people) and could be used to show kids how dangerous certain situations could be if precaution is not taken.

I was thinking basically this program could be something similar to our "D.A.R.E." program.

I haven't been in public school in a long time, so I don't know if they actually do this, but if they don't, do you think it'd be a good idea, and affordable, if safety and/or public safety courses became mandatory in school? Maybe somewhere in the area of 4th or 5th grade; Maybe a bit younger.

Basically teach them very basic things: How to tell if someone is suspicious; Yell "Fire" instead of "Help" if someone grabs you; Don't run away or go into an unpopulated area; Don't hitchike. Maybe have them watch a documentary on some of these dangers or, and I mean this seriously, have them watch some UM episodes in class--Since the murders and missing person's cases are based on factual events, they not only are "accessible" in that they're not dull, but they have an impact both entertainment wise and emotionally (as in, they scare most people) and could be used to show kids how dangerous certain situations could be if precaution is not taken.

I was thinking basically this program could be something similar to our "D.A.R.E." program.

Something along those lines would be ideal. However there are two reasons that it unfortunately will never happen:

1) The idiocy of the today's parents (actually it's long term project, this idiocy) prevents schools from teaching children sexual education even if that knowledge would reduce teen pregnancy and STD's. A survival course would have to face this same or similar idiocy.

2) The liability factor. If schools teach children this and for some reason the child ends up in a situation where they either fail to use this knowledge or use it and are still injured, some genius parents will be there w/ a lawyer waiting to get paid.

It's a good idea. Unfortunately, people are rarely receptive to good ideas.

I went to public school until a little over two years ago, when I started university. Perhaps it was different because I'm in the L.A. area, but our sex ed started out too mild and then in eighth grade exploded into being way over the top. It was good to learn about safety, but we were also shown videos that bombarded us with the idea that unprotected sex would be fatal (AIDS, etc.) The videos we were shown were quite outlandish, while it would have been preferable to focus more on the safety rather than the obvious slant of the videos. It was definitely preferable to abstinance-only sex-ed (things my out-of-state college friends have told me about in which you learn nothing). But our health focus was quite lax aside from sexuality. We would only go over health randomly in science classes (in both middle and elementary school) and it was rarely about safety in the stranger-danger sense. I definitely learned more about safety from my mother than from the school. Only rarely did we ever watch safety videos and they were seldom about strangers and violence. As cheesy as many stanger-danger videos are, they are important for the kids and learning. I started watching UM when I was nine, and that definitely gave me a better sense to be careful with strangers than classes ever did.

I would hope courses could be added for the safety purposes, but agree with cocytus that this would be difficult. At the very least, there should be at least a couple of activities a month in which students should be instructed about the dangers out in the world to make them safety-conscious.