AIDS display an important teaching tool for children

Thursday, Feb. 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

I find it incredulous that the board, comprised of what I assume to be educated people, can have their heads in the sand like an ostrich. For them to not allow our student body, with parental permission, to visit an outstanding AIDS exhibit, (where abstinence is mentioned constantly in the preventive section) at the Lied Museum is the height of not facing reality and harming our children, to a point of possible death, because of the ignorance of a few.

The time has come for the parents and educated people of our community to take a stand. Statistics have proven that good sex education does not increase, but indeed decreases promiscuity, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The fact that the members of the board did not even have the courtesy to see the exhibit, approved all over this country by educators, shows their disregard for any educational process and that they do not have our children's interests and health in mind.

Informative sex education not only does not increase promiscuity, but indeed, study after study has been proven to decrease it, causing less teen pregnancy, (Nevada is No. 2 in the nation), less promiscuity and less sexually transmitted diseases.

At the beginning of 1995, 1.5 million children have been infected with HIV. In the next five years, more than 5 million children will be infected.

By the year 2000, the cumulative total of HIV infections in men, women and children is estimated to 30-40 million worldwide.

Let's hope that our School Board's decision is not responsible for some of the victims.

Rabbi Richard Schachet, Valley Outreach Synagogue

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