In local schools, young children are exposed early to a problem affecting all demographics in their city. Beginning in kindergarten and continuing in every grade level up to the last year of high school, AIDS education is part of all New York public school students’ health curriculum.
The program is not taken lightly in New York, where tens of thousands of adults and children live with the virus. The curriculum was originally developed in the 1990s, when HIV became increasingly prevalent across the city. Harlem was hit especially hard, as a spike in needle drug use rapidly spread the disease. The Department of Education partnered with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in 2005 to revise the curriculum given the latest scientific developments. DOE receives funding for its HIV/AIDS prevention work from the U.S. Center for Disease Control.
While kindergarteners learn about “how people get sick,” middle schoolers explore how HIV is transmitted, and 12th graders are taught the “social and economic issues related to the HIV epidemic and living with HIV/AIDS,” said Betty Rothbart, who works in Fitness and Health Education for the Department of Education.
Whether or not lessons on contraception should be mandated is a question the DOE allows parents to answer.
“Parents or legal guardians have the right to ask that their child not participate in the lessons dealing with methods of prevention,” the department wrote in a letter sent to principals then distributed the information to parents.
But all students are taught about the nature of the disease and its transmission, in accordance with state law. According to Rothbart, “the vast majority” of parents have their children participate in the full curriculum.
“I think that parents recognize that schools and parents have a common agenda, which is to protect kids and make sure that they are healthy and that they know how to make healthy and responsible decisions,” she said. Principals ensure that elementary school students partake in five lessons, and middle and high school students attend six lessons on HIV/AIDS each school year.
Advocacy groups have fought long and hard for the kinds of AIDS education they feel is appropriate in schools, but many agree that the public school program is headed in the right direction. In 2007, Planned Parenthood applauded the city’s recommendations for a comprehensive sex education.
“It’s time that we treat sex ed as seriously as we treat math or social studies,” Planned Parenthood’s president and chief executive Joan Malin said at the time.
Despite the required health curriculum, some groups still say that public school health education is inadequate.
The Columbia chapter of the Peer Health Exchange, which trains college students to teach local students about topics like drugs, nutrition, and relationships, attempts to fill gaps at local schools. Co-presidents Dan Toledano, CC ’09, and Chloe Ciccariello, CC ’09, said that their club brings HIV/AIDS and sexual health education programs to nearby high schools “that do not already offer a comprehensive health education curriculum.” Workshop techniques include role-playing and data analysis. PHE’s efforts will reach approximately 750 high school students in the 2008-09 school year in New York.
“New York is still at the epicenter of the epidemic, and we want students to take it seriously,” Rothbart said. “At this point, so many New Yorkers know, love, or have lost someone to HIV/AIDS that there is very great recognition of its prevalence and of the need for education.”
alicia.outing@columbiaspectator.com