AIDS Lesson for Kindergartners
Laura Berman
has the details:
Carolyn Cohen, a Farmington Hills lawyer and mother of three, was surprised when her son, Alec, 6, came home from kindergarten carrying a note. The note said that as part of its health curriculum, students would get information about AIDS, but that parents could choose to keep their children out of the day's lesson.
But it's okay:
Here, in fact, are the four key points of the one-lesson health curriculum: 1) AIDS is a new disease, uncommon in children. 2) Health helpers are working hard to stop it. 3) Sick people need caring and concern.
The final point of this four-point program is essentially amusing: The kids learn that "teacher aides" are not the same as the illness AIDS.
In other words, the "AIDS curriculum" at the kindergarten level amounts to an acknowledgment that kids might hear the word AIDS on TV or elsewhere. It delivers some very basic, essentially reassuring, information about a bad disease and the good people trying to stop it.
Uh-huh. What is the cancer curriculum for kindergartners? And the heart attack curriculum?
