The District Chronicles

Issue date: 8/19/07 Section: Cover

To be successful, the mayor should have gotten the young people's opinions and really involved them in designing the campaign, said Powell, echoeing the feelings of many DC teenagers. "It's them that's affected, so why not have young people involved in making decisions about what the campaigns should and shouldn't do?" Powell asked.

Some parents also question the point of introducing HIV education to children as early as kindergarten. For example, Leon Harris, a father of five and a son in elementary school, is certain that HIV education should not be taught in elementary schools, let alone kindergarten.

"A lot of times, we teach kids stuff and it encourages them," he said. "If you are teaching them at an early age, you're kind of encouraging them, too."

Denita Pittman, who has a six-yea-old son and an 11-year-old daughter, would not want her son to be introduced to HIV education that young either. "My son doesn't know what AIDS is," she said. "He is just getting out of the kindergarten stage, so I think that's too premature. Probably at the first grade they will better understand."

Still, Adam Tenner, executive director of Metro TeenAIDS and an ardent advocate of early sex education, is convinced that starting as early as kindergarten would break down the stigma of HIV/AIDS in the city's youth. "One of the keys to stemming the epidemic is early education," he said.

But Alphonzo White, a 15-year-old student at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, believes the campaign should be directed at parents instead. They are the key, he said. "The parents do affect the youth," White said. "If their parents were in involved in sexual matters when they were young, the kids are going to do the same. It's about the environment you grow up in."

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