NEW YORK: City Debuts New AIDS Curriculum

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

NEW YORK: City Debuts New AIDS Curriculum

Gay City News (New York) (12.14.05) - Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Andy Humm

After years of delay and unheeded mandates that New York City public school students be taught about HIV/AIDS, the Department of Education unveiled a revised curriculum on Dec. 1. "This publication underscores the Department of Education's fervent belief that this is important. It is crucial to get it right," said Betty Rothbart, director of the DOE's Office of Health Education and Family Living and supervisor of the revision, on which the city health department also collaborated.

While New York City does not accept federal funding for abstinence-only education, the curriculum does follow city and state mandates to emphasize abstinence as the "safest way" to avoid HIV infection.

Classroom condom demonstrations, which were common in city schools even before the AIDS era, have been banned since Mayor Rudy Giuliani's term. Despite the curriculum's assertion that condom effectiveness is dependant on proper use, classroom demonstrations are still restricted. Instead, such lessons will continue to be offered in one-to-one sessions in health resource rooms.

According to Stephanie Andujar of Youth Organizers United, classroom demonstrations are "when you have students together and they feel most comfortable." Most students, said Andujar, "feel ashamed" to ask a teacher for a one-on-one demonstration because "it's too personal."

Rothbart said the lessons give "age appropriate" information on proper condom use and that limiting demonstrations to resource rooms has the "advantage of giving young people the opportunity to ask questions."

There is no plan to do pre- and post-testing of student knowledge levels on HIV/AIDS this year, said Rothbart. Though the DOE does have students participate in CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, it has no other plans for assessing whether the new curriculum reduces risk behaviors.
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