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Life Education Australia; Harold the giraffe

Klue

Klue

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Nov 23, 2006
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I searched and searched but as far as I can gather, Life Education hasn’t been discussed as yet. This is surprising as their primary aim is drug education and harm reduction. Please excuse me if there is a thread already.

So who remembers the Life Education van and Happy, Healthy Harold? Hopefully this will apply to a number of Bluelighters as they have been around since 1979. I certainly remember the novelty of a talking giraffe, and I remember at one stage discussing drugs. But the fact it was specifically a HR program is something I have only just realised.

This begs the question, is primary school age a good time for kids to learn about HR.
I did learn a lot when I was a bit older in my Heath and Personal Development classes in High School though.

What are people's memories of Life Education? Do you think maybe it should be aimed at a higher age group?

Their website claims that reduced use of Heroin, Cannabis, alcohol and cigarettes in recent years is an indication of the importance of their program, but this could be other things, no?

Life Education Australia website

:D
 
Oh man, you guys have them too? I thought they were a NZ thing. They're terrible! Such incredible misinformation.

My friend is a primary school teacher, and she says the kids just love Harold. So they've clearly got a well-worked out promotional campaign; just wish their research was a bit better.
 
I remember Harold and placing plastic organs on a mat, I do not remember any drug education involved though. Couldn't of been very good, it would have only been about 3 years later I smoked pot.
 
I remember a talking giraffe. Met him twice in my primary school days. I think I remember that the kids had to encourage harold to come out because he was gay or something.

(^ hehe, I ment to say 'shy' but I put 'gay', i'm gonna leave it as is.)

I don't remember anything the life education van tried to teach me. I don't think it's harmful to target the ages of kids they do. Get the information into them young I suppose.

I remember being excited to see the life education van arrive at my school... and the dental van (anything to get out of regular class). There would always be talk about kids, trying to get other kids to punch harold in the head, but I never heard it actually happening.
 
Man I remember that thing. Though I only got, like, halfway through it each time coz I'd get queezy looking at the dummy with the organs showing. Weak stomach hath me.
 
wow talk about bringing back childhood memories. I think i remember a red blood cell. Maybe it was something similar though.
 
I remember they would turn the lights off and there would be stars on the roof of their van.

I always thought it was drug education but they never did any of that. Just "life" education. It was still better than school though, we beat the shit out of Harold!
 
Holy crap I remember Harold! That takes me way back... I remember there were stars on the roof... and body organs on the floor. I don't remember anything about drugs though, how do you teach harm minimisation to kids? "Don't double drop kids, and never share needles!"
 
Lol! Go Harold! It was the same routine every time but I always liked it being in like kindy, year one, year two. He came like every few months for us! I remember Tammy the doll or something too. Because she was naked or something it would take like 5 minutes before everyone stopped laughing and the people would start to get pissed off.

They should hjave a new character called Bazza the Smoking Alcoholic.. who coughs and splurts every 5 seconds while singing jimmy barnes and dribbling complete drunk crap while hicupping. Then you get to disect him and see his lungs and liver and how his penis doesn't work anymore.
 
I can remember going to many of these when I was a young kid. Each year it was fairly similar, though I think there were a few things they didn't discuss until the later years (grade 5-7). I can remember doing the same activities as other posters have described, so I guess there really hasn't been much change over the years in terms of how they are trying to convey their message to kids.

I can specifically remember one activity that we had to do, where basically a few students were randomly selected (myself being one of them) and the person running the session pretending to be a "peer" trying to get us to smoke a ciggarette. It was our task to practice how to reject this kind of offer. Being the smartass 5th grader that I was, my reply to this was something to the effect of "I wouldn't waste my time with tobacco because pot is much better". The look on the teachers face was priceless (if anything I guess she was shocked to hear it from such a young child). That said, the attitude towards pot during the 90's in SA was far more relaxed than it is now (and the laws reflected that given that we could grow 12 hydro plants and only get a $150 civil fine).

I can't really remember any information being given that I'd associate with harm minimisation - it was all pretty much of the "just say no" style. That said, I can't imagine 3rd graders would need to be educated about things like how to use/dispose of a fit correctly, or how to test pills for adultrants. Admittedly though there's probably some more relevant HM techniques that could be taught to children that I've overlooked.

edit: Actually now that I think about it, there was one activity that could have been considered HM. It was designed to show us the legal limits for drinking and driving. Basically we were shown a chart that had what quantities of particular alcoholic beverages (wine, beer, vodka etc) made up one standard drink. We were also told how much one could drink before being over the legal limit, which at the time was "4 standard drinks for male and 2 for females". That was a little confusing however, given that there was no time limit indicated (4 standard drinks in 10 minutes or over the space of 4 hours?). I'd imagine its different these days - to my understanding the law now is (for SA atleast) that you can have 2 standard drinks in the first hour and one every hour after (or one in the first hour and one every hour after for females).
 
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There was no Harold when I was at school :(

As for whether kids should be taught about drugs at a young age. Well, we teach them about poisons don't we? And all drugs are toxic, so why not?

Last week, a friend's daughter (18yo) was looking through the pamphlet that came in the mail (about talking with your kids on drugs). She had a page open showing ecstasy tablets, when her 6 yo sister came up, looked at the page and said "yummy, lollies" The older girl then explained that not everything that looks like a lolly is a lolly.

So yes, kids should be taught about drugs at a young age IMHO. It's what they're taught and how that's done that needs refining.
 
Hmm thats why you should hide your drugs always in hard to reach places if you have children around the house. I never know why people leave it in stupid places in the kitchen, where a child can easily pull it down, jump on a chair looking for lollies and food etc. I mean how many times does a story of a kid rushed to hospital because they've taken a tablet of some kind reach the news? Too bad often. It's normally the ones that smoke bongs and cigarettes right in front of their children too, and leave alcoholic drinks in the kids reach when they'rte sitting in a high chair. Maybe there needs to be a Harold for young parents.
 
I don't remember there being anything about drugs when we went to see Harold. I thought it was all learning about the body. Perhaps they've modified their program somewhat since I was in primary school (late 80s/early 90s).
 
Harold was cool, but there was always somekind of an act to piss him off, oe year my fried puched him i the nose, another time another friend just plain pulled him off the puppeteers hand lol it was funny as, I think we just got tired of seeing him in yr 5-6, I mean puppets are a bit immature for 12 yr olds.

But yeah he was a funny giraffe.
 
^ Our Harold was robotic - he was controlled by the leader and they made his mouth move, eyes blink etc. One of his eyes was dodgy and got stuck all the time which was seriously creepy - it looked like Harold was munted.
 
We had this puppet show come to our school. I don't remember much of it but it was definitely some kind of hand puppet.

Then we played with this plastic doll that had removable organs. I remember thinking it was hilarious that there was a large intestine (because that's where POO comes out). Also you could see inside or remove one of its breasts, which I also recall thinking was pretty hilarious (because that's a BOOB).

And there was some colouring in books or something. I don't think it had much of an impact on me...
 
I had Harold and the Life Ed van in primary school, and then in high school we still had a Life Ed van but minus Harold. In the high school session they did talk about drugs, the main focus was alcohol but they briefly touched on the evil of illicit drugs, I remember them having a particular rant about heroin.
 
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