Thanks, Teach

What I remember most clearly about how the problem was handled when I was growing up is the relentless and almost fanatical push that was made to educate us from elementary school up through high school and even college. I am grateful that the cultural taboos of the 1950s had evaporated by the time I was in grade school in the early 1990s. I  clearly remember the first time that the subject was addressed. I was in second grade and it was during a school assembly. Some of the powers that were at that time might have wanted to wait to tackle the subject when it could have been woven into the fifth grade sex discussion, but this was the age of Magic Johnson; we were asking questions at a young age, and I’m glad that we were. The initial focus was not on explaining how one contracts the disease (no doubt that would have derailed the discussion) but rather what the disease was and how it did not turn people that had it into monsters. Without Magic Johnson announcing that he was HIV positive, I’m afraid the disease would have been pushed into the closet and discussed at a later time. But how could you do that? Most of my friends at the time had Magic Johnson basketball cards and Dream Team jerseys. There was no way for AIDS to be marginalized anymore, and that made a big difference for my generation.

AIDS was a primary curricular focus throughout all of the sex and drug education throughout my life. The dedication by educational professionals to not let this cozily slip into the same danger level of running with scissors and swimming after you eat is commendable. The bombardment of focus on AIDS throughout my time in school helped foster taboos that persist in my generation today and they are instrumental in the overall health and safety of society. Safe sex is now one of those hot-button topics, much as drinking and driving was for the generation before mine. Youth is a time where, for the most part, indiscretions reign but not even the most promiscuous person I know would consider engaging in unsafe sex, for fear of contracting HIV. It is seen as the same kind of risk as getting behind the wheel after drinking. Credit for this awareness of health risk is overdue, and it should be given to the public education system in this country for meeting the problem head on and tenaciously gripping and reinforcing it, even at a time when the rest of society might not have felt all that comfortable with it.