It’s Up to the Schools Now

Considering all the fear and ignorance surrounding AIDS, and the disjointed and, at times, non-existent efforts to impart sound information about it to young people who could be at risk, the Orange County Board of Supervisors deserves support and praise for its decision last Tuesday to distribute to teen-agers, parents and teachers a booklet explaining AIDS.

The booklet is needed. But needed as much as the information it contains is bold leadership in the fight against the deadly disease that has drawn only fragmented efforts from both the public and private sectors in the county. The Board of Supervisors, to its credit, is trying to provide that.

Last Tuesday’s action wasn’t its first attempt to set the course against AIDS. In December the supervisors created a committee to plan the battle against AIDS. And to show that it was being more serious than politic, the board also created the post of AIDS Coordinator--and budgeted money to fill the job.

And now it plans to distribute the pamphlet, “Teens and AIDS,” to junior and senior high school superintendents in the hope that they will pass it on to the students. The superintendents should do so, enthusiastically.

At present the approach being taken by the schools to make teen-agers aware of the dangers posed by AIDS has been fragmented. Some districts are doing an outstanding job. Some barely broach the delicate subject. Others don’t mention it at all. The problem, and it is a problem for teen-agers, deserves much more frank and open discussion than it is getting.

Some people still think that AIDS is a disease suffered only by male homosexuals and drug addicts. The fact is AIDS also strikes unborn infants and hemophiliacs--and is currently spreading the fastest in the heterosexual, not the gay, community, though there are still many more cases among gays. With an estimated half of the high school students reportedly sexually active, the importance of providing teen-agers with information on AIDS is critical.

Indeed, with no vaccines or cure for AIDS in sight, the best weapon is education on how the disease is transmitted, how to minimize exposure to it and to dispel the dangerous myths springing up about it. The consequences are too deadly to be ignored out of some misguided sense of modesty.

The schools are the most logical place to get that information out to young people. The U.S. Surgeon General and the state superintendent of education have urged that AIDS information be included in school programs. The county, with its new pamphlet for teen-agers, is trying to help do that. The schools should be responding to those efforts.