AIDS/HIV Education For Kindergartners

• March 18, 2006

Along with the ABC’s, kindergartners will now learn about HIV.
Beginning Monday, kindergartners in public schools will be told that HIV is a “germ” and “not easy to get.”
The kids also will learn that HIV could lead to AIDS, which is hard to “get well” from, according to the city’s new HIV/AIDS curriculum.
The changes are required by state law – but some parents and teachers fear kindergartners are too young to talk about the deadly disease.
“I don’t think it is appropriate. It’s scary for kids in kindergarten,” said a Manhattan mom whose daughter attends kindergarten at Public School 166 on the upper West Side.
“How do you talk about AIDS without talking about sex and drugs?” she asked.

Ace has a line on the new curriculum:

8:00: Story circle
9:00 Unsafe sexual practices and body fluids exchanges
10:00 Show and tell

Why anybody thinks this sort of thing is a good idea is beyond me.

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http://igotthisblog.blogspot.com/ Seth Williams

Just another case of mandated tolerance gone too far. Why can’t they use a little logic: if a child that age knows someone with HIV/AIDS, it’s likely a family member or friend of the family–in which case the family has already told them that they should act normally around them.

Just doesn’t seem like a good and necessary use of school time.
http://igotthisblog.blogspot.com/ Seth Williams

What an amazingly inane idea. Besides the fact that children that age have no real concept of mortality, they ought not to have an idea about sexuality–they’re just too young to naturally have sexual urges (it being biologically driven), so why do they need to know about sexual disease? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
robert108

Seth/Rob: What you guys said, plus that they are lying to the kids.  It’s not caused by a "germ";  it’s caused by a retrovirus.  It is easy to catch if you are having sex with someone in a high risk group or are shooting intravenous drugs.  Why not tell the truth?  Better yet, let’s not sexualize our kindergartners.  What is the benefit of this program?
http://www.1in4-date.com/ Robert

I think that in kindergarden and then at school and college kids should learn not only about HIV but get a basic medicine education.
http://igotthisblog.blogspot.com/ Seth Williams

Um, wow Robert…honestly, no offense intended but you’re showing a shocking level of ignorance about HIV and an equally shocking lack of compassion. "Don’t touch people with HIV"??? Sweet Christ, you have a better chance of getting a fatal case of the flu by just being near a "normal" person than you have of getting AIDS by shaking hands with the HIV infected. Unless of course that person has sperm/mother’s milk/blood on their hands…in which case you shouldn’t be touching them anyway, HIV or not.

You can’t get AIDS from a toilet seat robert. HIV positive people aren’t lepers.
robert108

Seth: I don’t agree with the "act normally around them" stuff, either.  They should be told not to have physical contact with them.  They aren’t normal; they’re seriously ill.
robert108

Seth: Never said they were.  I do believe that saliva is a risk, though.  Kids like to hug and kiss people and climb in their laps, stuff like that.  I think trying to "mainstream" HIV/AIDS is a very cynical thing to do, especially with 5-6 year olds.  As far as compassion is concerned, I believe that, as you said, you don’t get it through the air or water, so it’s a disease of choice, for the most part.  I don’t believe there is much victimhood here.
robert108

Seth:  And another thing: placing the emotional needs of adults who have contracted a serious lifestyle diseae against those of small children is just monstrous.

docdave:  Yeah man!  They are still putting the poison out there in the community, but homeschooling offers some protection from it. 
docdave

Is kindergarten mandatory now?  Whatever, this is reason 124,974 for homeschooling.
Noob

You can’t catch HIV from saliva. However, there are trace amounts of the disease in the Saliva. But you would have to drinks buckets of Saliva before you got sick.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

The excuse I’ve seen is that its important for kids to know that "people who have AIDS are normal too and that you can act normally around them."

Which still seems silly.  We don’t mandate class time for that sort of instruction about cancer.

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AIDS/HIV Education For Kindergartners

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