=for timestamp
Fr Dez  9 18:42:02 CET 2005

=head2 16. Hausaufgabe

=head3 Comment on topic 3

I<All schools should, like schools in Hessen, be smoke free areas. This means
no opportunity for both students and teachers to smoke while at school.
Discuss.>

I agree with the author of above sentence. But several measures will have to be
taken in order to achieve this goal.

Firstly, teachers who smoke will have to stop smoking. This step is necessary
for several reasons: pupils, especially younger ones, often take a leaf out of
the teachers' book. If teachers sort of ignore the ban -- even only privately
-- they aren't as good role models as they could be, thus reducing the
effectiveness of the ban ("what's so bad about smoking, given that even my
teachers smoke").

Additionally, we may not forget that the realisation of the ban will surely
cost a pretty penny. This money will have to be raised by the taxpayers, the
teachers included. People who smoke are unlikely to accept to have to pay for
the realisation of a ban against smoking, possibly resulting in an indirect
boycott of the ban by some teachers.

More importantly, I don't think a smoking ban is sufficient for achieving the
goal of less young people smoking: the ban has to be accompanied by appropriate
education, children have to be cleared up about the dangers of smoking from the
very beginning on.