An Epidemic of Ignorance Among Educators : School District Buries Head in Sand on AIDS Education

The spread of the worldwide AIDS epidemic has been greatly assisted by two things: ignorance and naivete. Antelope Valley Union High School District President Sue Stokka and her colleagues have managed to wrap themselves in both, to the great and continuing detriment of students.

At issue is the fact that the school board, late last year, hastily and rashly banned a federally funded and Los Angeles County-approved AIDS education program. That occurred after a student at Quartz Hill High School in Lancaster asked the program’s instructors what protection should be used during oral sex.

The answer given by representatives of the Catalyst Foundation for AIDS Awareness and Care, the only AIDS foundation in the Antelope Valley, was accurate in terms of the precautions that can be taken. And the Catalyst Foundation does emphasize in its presentations the important point that the only fail-safe way to prevent sexual transmission of the AIDS virus is to not have sex.

Still, the district fell into a collective and unwarranted anxiety attack because of that one question and answer. Stokka’s recent comments show that the district has yet to regain its senses.

Abstinence is the only thing that students should be taught, Stokka says. Moreover, Stokka believes, students “could live the rest of their lives without any knowledge of oral sex,” presumably as long as some AIDS education program didn’t let that cat out of the bag.

This flies in the face of everything we now know, medically and statistically, about the scourge of AIDS and the inroads it has made among youths who are already active sexually.

Were school district officials asleep at the wheel last year, when AIDS was declared the No. 1 killer of Americans ages 25 to 44? Didn’t the district realize that the death figures meant that many had contracted the virus as teenagers, primarily because of the AIDS virus’ long, asymptomatic incubation period of 10 years or more?

Is the district equally unaware of the 1996 Clinton White House study “Youth and HIV/AIDS,” which points out that one out of every four new AIDS virus infections in this country involve people under the age of 20?

The implications, as predicted last year by AIDS expert Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, do not require a degree in rocket science. Stressing abstinence is, of course, important, but teenagers are already sexually active to an alarming degree. Laurence, director of AIDS research at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center, foresaw a third wave of new infections: one spread by teenagers who are unaware of their infection to other teenagers who are ignorant of how to protect themselves. That wave has arrived.

Is the Antelope Valley somehow sacrosanct and immune to profound medical and social ills? Of course it isn’t.

In 1993, when Los Angeles County had the highest and fastest-growing teenage birthrate in the nation, there was the Antelope Valley, implementing classes for pregnant teens at five of its high schools. Then, 433 pupils, or 3.3% of the students attending classes in the Antelope Valley Union High School District, were pregnant. That represented a 39.9% increase in pregnancies since 1991.

Teenagers need all the sensible and accurate information they can get on the subject of AIDS and how to avoid it. The Catalyst Foundation had been trying to provide such information and deserved far better than a summary dismissal.

It seems to us as though too many members of the Antelope Valley Union High School District board are suffering from denial at a most inopportune time. For the sake of their students, they ought to be better informed. Lives are at stake.