Well Done

Two weeks ago, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School hosted its second annual wellness day. Thirty-seven workshops were offered by faculty and community volunteers. The workshops covered a wide range of offerings including fitness, yoga, cooking, counseling and suicide prevention, to name just a few.

As the nation continues to aim its sights on those most peculiar of bad guys, teachers and the education system, it is important to remember that school is not just a place of reading, writing and arithmetic and an endless battery of tests to gauge performance levels. School is where young people spend most of their time, in the company of their peers as well as trained, devoted adults. It is where much of the process of becoming men and women takes place, in the classroom, on the playing fields, and also in workshops like the ones conducted during wellness day. That so many of the workshops focused less on the advancement of particular skills that could someday be converted into monetary reward but rather leaned toward life skills aimed at helping kids achieve healthier lifestyles both physically and mentally was noteworthy.

In a letter this week to the Gazette Nancy Langman, the program director of the Island Counseling Center, cited research that found a 21 per cent higher incidence of mental health and substance abuses issues on the Vineyard as compared to the rest of the state.

This report did not single out students or young people but it did take a measure of the community at large. Also of note is that Ms. Langman’s letter was written in response to an article in last week’s Gazette detailing a new wave of both crime and drug abuse involving prescription drugs. Again, this case does not single out students but is, it appears, part of a nationwide trend of increasing abuse of prescription drugs.

That the high school is trying to give students the ability to help themselves bodes well for the Island’s future. If it is a truism that children become adults, it can also be inferred that healthy children are more apt to become healthy adults. It is in this spirit that we applaud the volunteer efforts of wellness day.