THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCHOOL
IN HIV&AIDS EDUCATION

HIV Facilitator Willie Mafuse discusses reasons why the school environment provides the best opportunity to educate South African youth about HIV&AIDS.

HIV&Me is a program run by Regency Foundation Networx SA, designed to equip educators with the skills necessary to educate learners on HIV&AIDS prevention and management. The program focuses predominantly on the Life Orientation and Natural Science learning areas, with lessons appropriate to English as a Second Language and Arts & Culture curricula as well.

Due to the emotion and sensitivities surrounding HIV&AIDS, it is necessary for the educators to experience the training program and to be provided with both the content and the skills to deliver the lessons on to their learners. The program includes detailed discussions on sex, death, illness, alcohol and drug use. It also addresses a variety of psycho-social and bio-medical issues, which the majority of educators have little or no experience in dealing with. As such HIV&Me closes that gap and enables dialogue between educators and learners without personal values conflicting with the health needs of participating learners.

HIV&AIDS prevention and management is not an individual role but rather a group effort; and schools play a pivotal role in this education for learners as well as for their parents and communities. The implication of low literacy levels in such disadvantaged communities is that HIV&AIDS education is disseminated to the parents via their children, and not the other way around. Thus educators and the school act as the link in HIV&AIDS dialogue between parents and learners.

Teenagers are eager to know about sex as well as the HIV epidemic, how to prevent being infected and to live with others who are positive without stigmatizing them. However, culturally, some parents and guardians do not communicate on issues of sexuality or HIV&AIDS. This means that these teenagers learn about sexuality through alternate sources such as friends, magazines, or the internet; some of which will provide factually incorrect, misleading or biased information; leaving them vulnerable to irresponsible behaviour and poor decision making. AIDS orphans and members of child headed households are also especially at risk.

The school therefore has the opportunity to provide these youth with factually correct information as well as guidance and the necessary psycho social skills to enable them to make healthy choices with regard to their sexual interactions. To do this, educators must be equipped with sufficient competence and the right attitude towards HIV&AIDS. As many of them live with the virus, or have their own conscious or subconscious attitudes and fears about HIV, these educators need the opportunity to address HIV in their own lives and to be provided with the training in both skills and methodology to adequately cascade this learning in their schools and classrooms.

According to a study conducted by the Department of Health (2000) in six provinces to investigate when young people become sexually active, the results revealed that in the Free State the onset of sex is 12 years of age, and that in KZN, 76% of girls would be sexually active by the age of 15 and 90% of boys by the age of 16. The other provinces ranged from 11-16 in the onset of sexual activity. These facts further highlight the critical role of schools in introducing learners to HIV&AIDS information before they become sexually active and to prepare them to face the realities of the pandemic whether infected or affected. Time is of the essence and education starting at school level is our best prospect in achieving a nation free of HIV, gender violence, stigma and discrimination.

For more information:

http://www.regency.org/hivandme.html