The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Awareness high, but knowledge scanty

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 17, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Awareness high, but knowledge scanty

R. Sujatha

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: A winner in the essay contest on the role of students in creating an AIDS-free India.

CHENNAI: A psychologist's chat with higher secondary students in a Government School in the city's western suburb has made them better aware of AIDS. "My students are better informed," says the headmistress who had no difficulty in drawing female reproductive organs on the board, but "in a class with 20-year-old boys I could not bring myself to draw the male reproductive organs."

Reproduction in plants and animals is part of science lessons from Standard VIII. In Standard IX textbook the subject is better explained but when it comes to human reproductive system teachers stumble, particularly in co-educational schools.

Biology lessons for class XI and XII include chapters on reproductive organs but since teachers rush through these lessons students are under-informed.

Genesis Welfare Trust, a non-government organisation, which has been conducting an HIV/AIDS awareness programme among school students, found that most students had little knowledge about the spread of the disease.

The NGO held an essay contest in 2000 for students of classes Classes 9 to 11 in Chennai Corporation schools on the role of students in creating an AIDS-free India.

This year, 200 students from Government aided/unaided high school and higher secondary schools and 365 from Matriculation schools wrote essays on the same topic.

The NGO found that awareness of AIDS was high but "students are unaware of how much of it is associated with sex," says R. Thangathurai, general secretary of the trust. It recommends sex education, counselling in person and over phone; sessions with HIV/AIDS affected and study tours to groups working with the affected. It also suggests "imaginatively exploiting television for spread of HIV/AIDS education."

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