Opening Eyes About AIDS Awareness : Santa Clarita Board, 2 Taft High School Seniors Deserve Praise for Efforts to Educate

Despite having faced a meeting of more than 100 angry parents and clergymen earlier in the year, the Sulphur Springs School District board in Santa Clarita has unanimously approved an AIDS education program for its elementary school students. And south of there, at Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley, a couple of thoughtful seniors helped make sure that the attire at the fall formal dance included AIDS awareness ribbons.

These two acts were separate, but not unrelated in terms of their importance for increasing awareness of AIDS. According to statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service Budget Office, the fatal and currently incurable disease is now second only to cancer in terms of the number of years of potential life lost before the age of 65. As an epidemic, it is by no means under control.

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is considered by experts to be the unquestioned cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Teen-agers are one of the fastest growing groups to test positive for that virus. Because of the disease’s long incubation period, it is believed that many of those who have been diagnosed with AIDS in their 20s came in contact with it in their teen-age years.

As Taft High School senior Anat Rubin puts it: “We felt AIDS wasn’t talked about enough. High school students know about AIDS, but they think it’s not going to happen to them.” She, along with Rachel Goldman, promoted the awareness idea.

Similarly, the Sulphur Springs School District board felt that elementary school was not too early to start. Its AIDS education curriculum seems to be a measured approach that slowly adds information as students grow older.

For kindergarten students through the second grade, for example, AIDS is described as a disease caused by a germ that “makes it hard for our cells to kill other germs.” By the third and fourth grades, students are told that body fluids can spread the AIDS virus.

If parents think that these are facts that their children need not know, perhaps they should consider this: There have been 20,449 AIDS cases diagnosed in Los Angeles County since 1981. Only about a third of those people are still alive.

The Taft students and the Sulphur Springs board ought to be commended for heightening the level of awareness to this unfolding tragedy, and for arguing the case for education instead of ignorance.