Get the Information Out! : Glendale school board should restore canceled play on AIDS and condoms

For nearly a year, the Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. of Hoover High School in Glendale has pursued a reasonable idea. It wanted to co-sponsor a play on the dangers of AIDS and educate teen-agers on the use of condoms as a way to help prevent the spread of the disease.

It was not to be an amateurish effort. The play, “Secrets,” was produced by the Kaiser Permanente health care organization. It already has been seen by 700,000 California students, including many in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Hoover High School officials also planned to follow the play with a discussion stressing abstinence as the most effective way of preventing AIDS.

Still, Glendale school district officials canceled the performances of “Secrets,” which was scheduled to debut last week. “The philosophy of this district is that abstinence is the clear message we send,” said a spokesperson.

There is nothing wrong with stressing abstinence, but denying that there is any other realistic way to approach AIDS prevention amounts to burying one’s head in the sand. Teen-agers are sexually active at alarming rates, and the most active among them are the least likely to use condoms.

According to national surveys by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40% of ninth-graders and 72% of 12th-graders say they have had sex.

Teen-agers who acknowledged having sex with four or more partners ranged from a low of 19% and 6.8% of ninth-grade males and females, respectively, to a high of 38.5% and 17% of 12th-grade males and females, respectively.

Because of the AIDS incubation period, which can last a decade or longer, it is likely that many of the people who have come down with the disease in their 20s contracted the AIDS virus in their teen-age years.

On Tuesday night, Hoover PTSA representatives defended the play before the Glendale school board, which took the matter under advisement. That’s hardly sufficient. The district has a responsibility to disseminate authoritative information on ways other than abstinence to prevent the spread of AIDS. The play should go on.