By Piya Sorcar
Commentary

In 2010, given how widespread HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns are, you might be surprised to learn how little knowledge about HIV and AIDS many people actually have. It turns out that it is not at all easy to teach about HIV/AIDS, especially in some of the highest-risk regions in the world. Prevention education is a highly localized problem that does not lend itself to a one-size-fits-all solution. Commercial sex work, intravenous drug-use, premarital sex, and homosexuality are controversial topics in many parts of the world, and prevent many HIV/AIDS curricula from being used in those regions.

In a study we conducted in India through Stanford University in 2006, we found that children had essentially superficial knowledge about HIV and AIDS. For years, they had been bombarded with mass media messages teaching them the right answers to some common questions. But when we asked them questions that were slightly different or deeper, they were unable to answer correctly. For example, when we asked whether they could get HIV from blood, they all knew that the answer was yes. But when we asked them "How do you get HIV from blood?", presenting them with options like looking at blood or touching blood, they did not know the right answer. We saw this pattern again and again in questions about HIV transmission, revealing a consistent lack of ability to make decisions about HIV/AIDS in novel situations.

Sex education, as most of us know it, is also not allowed in many regions of the world. This makes it challenging for HIV/AIDS education to enter schools, as it has traditionally been thought of as a component of sex education. In cases of more conservative societies where sex education is still allowed, educators have created a number of approaches to teach about HIV/AIDS despite cultural challenges. Some educators believe the best way to relieve a topic of its taboo status is to talk openly and directly about it, regardless of the resulting discomfort among participants. The assumption is that with plain discussion, individuals will become more comfortable or at least desensitized, and in time, the taboo will diminish or even cease to exist. However, this strategy is often ineffective or even illegal when the taboo is reified through law and custom. Advocates of addressing taboos "head-on", by providing materials which themselves become taboo, often find themselves in a Sisyphean exercise -- which also limits the materials' ability to ever be used in the contexts in which they are most needed. In addition, changing cultural norms is a long-term goal at best, and universal education still needs to be provided in the interim.

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Photo: courtesy Piya Sorcar