Sex Education

Dear Indigna,

I just learned that a number of states have already passed or are considering mandates that schools begin AIDS education in kindergarten. In New York, for example, the regulation would require that “By the fourth grade, pupils would be taught that the virus can be transmitted, in the language of the department's guide, by ‘sexual intercourse with an infected partner without proper use of a condom’” because ''children must learn how to protect themselves and others from this infection.'' AIDS will be taught alongside “measles, chicken pox and other childhood diseases.”

Won’t this just make the kids want to have sex, or think it is normal for fourth graders to be sexually active?

Shocked
Hog Waller, TN

Dear Shocked,

It is clear you must have spent the last thirty years in an Amish community. Everybody knows that 6 is the new 18, so we have to treat kindergartners as the hip, mature, sophisticated beings that they now are. At the kindergarten stage, AIDS education is limited to discussion of the theories of transmission, including Senator Bill Frist’s belief that you can get it from tears, saliva, sweat, toilet seats, hot tubs, holding hands, etc. Although scientists are pretty much unanimous that none of these vectors transmits AIDS, the schools are careful to present “all theories” of transmission so that the kids can decide for themselves what to believe. AIDS victims will also be compared and contrasted with sufferers of “measles, chicken pox, and other childhood diseases” so that the students can have a lively debate about whom they are more afraid to be seated next to on the bus.

As there is no chance a kindergartner can get pregnant, contraception is not taught until 4th grade, when obviously the children will have reached full sexual maturity. One goal of the program is to de-stigmatize AIDS to the point that those who are HIV-positive are treated no differently from those with “measles, chicken pox, and other childhood diseases.” The main goal, of course, is to prevent any of our children from contracting HIV, so a rich variety of “safe sex” options will be discussed, demonstrated, and rated on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the hottest, by professionals who will be invited to speak and/or perform. By the end of the year the “experimenters,” “sluts,” and “studs” in the class should have the tools they need to have a super-duper social life with very low risk of infection.