Two times in my life I feared I might be trampled to death. Once was in the midst of the Mardi Gras madness of Mazatlan, Mexico. The other was in China's Guangzhou rail terminal, where I was swept along by a tide of passengers attempting to storm the turnstiles without paying.

I was saved on that scary occasion by an English-speaking Chinese lady, who urged me to press my body against a wall until the surge passed. But what escape hatch presents itself these days when I often feel myself moved along unwittingly by a sort of ideological stampede that threatens to rip my accustomed linchpins from their moorings?

Despite amazing technological advances, society seems to be spiraling downward. Once again I got that awful feeling when I read the story in the Lompoc Record about fourth graders and even kindergartners being taught how to say "No!" to drugs.

On the front page of the newspaper appeared a colored picture of cute, smiling kids holding up posters about a drug-free America and "healthy" choices. They had signed pledges to stay off drugs, no doubt without protest - or comprehension. The intent of making them aware of drug abuse was understandable, but at how early an age do we have to push this agenda on our kids? Certainly, it is easier to say "no" in a classroom under a teacher's guidance than to do so under peer pressure and poor role models later on.

Anyone can pledge to do or not do anything. We know where the road paved with good intentions often leads. Not even our adult congresswoman kept her written pledge to serve a limited number of terms. But the idea of a school pledge is not what I find disturbing. It's the fact that we live in a society so heedlessly self-destructive that it is robbing the innocence from coming generations.

Imagine having to sit little kids down and explain the dangers that await them at every turn on the streets of their own hometown! Most young children cannot really grasp the alluring menace they eagerly pledge to avoid. And if they do recognize it from activities in their own homes or among older siblings, a school pledge is not, after all, a likely defense.

It is regrettable that educators must now add to their busy curricula lessons that were once taught by responsible parents. As the world grows more dangerous, the classroom becomes a haven crowded with subjects having little to do with the mastering of basics. What did schools do, say, before there were so-called grief counselors? Perhaps there was less cause for grief. There was certainly less mayhem to trigger it.

In the news not long ago was the story of a high school girl returning from her prom in Richmond, Calif., who was gang-raped by a group of violent young men. A school administrator later remarked defensively that it was an isolated incident, even though the crime was witnessed by an audience of other schoolmates who did not intercede or call for help. The facts are that there's lots of criminal activity in that high school - and a drop-out rate of close to 80 percent. Would it have helped any had those kids signed a pledge as kindergartners or fourth graders to say no to dropping out?

There is a pattern developing in America. With the increasing dependence on government bureaucracy to solve our problems, the beleaguered school system finds more and more societal ills dumped on its doorstep. God may be barred from entering, but drug addiction, truancy, sexual permissiveness, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, child molestation, vandalism, violence, etc., are all ushered in - and up for discussion.

Anti-drug pledges in grade school are well-intentioned. But in spite of them, chances are all too real that our children won't have a prayer against the tide of cultural indulgence and degeneration that is sweeping them into the future.

Doris O'Brien lives in Vandenberg Village.