by Sarah Glazer

About the author: Sarah Glazer is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

Parents of children who attend a respected private school in Washington, D.C., met in 1995 to discuss ways to keep their kids from using drugs. They had good reason to meet. Half the students on the senior class ski trip, the parents had just learned, smoked marijuana on the outing.

Drug-Generation Parents and Their Children

One mother expressed a worry echoed by several of the baby-boomer parents at the meeting. “How do I talk to my seventh-grader about not using drugs,” she asked, “when it was our generation that ushered in the drug revolution in the 1960s"”

Mothers and fathers around the nation are facing the same dilemma, whether their children attend public or private schools. Most parents...