THE PUBLIC MIND: NEWS PROGRAM RAISES SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT DIRECTION OF NATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM

To the Editor:

A Dan Rather special news program sends chills through the body and raises serious concerns about the direction of our national educational system.

The teachers involved in the program were well-meaning, of course, but they also were about as far off base as any liberal special interest group can ever be.

The broadcast showed groups of educators from an urban area teaching about that No. 1 favorite topic of the national media and special interest groups across the country, AIDS.

To whom were the teachers lecturing about AIDS? Why kindergarten pupils and pre-kindergartners, of course. Now, just what could they teach their very small charges? Well, according to the teachers, they can't mention sex, much less homosexual sex, to children until the fifth grade (though most fifth graders we've known have other things on their minds even at that advanced age).

So they were telling these hapless 4- and 5-year-old children about "mixing blood...."

"How do you get AIDS? You get it by mixing blood with somebody else," one teacher shrilled to her captive audience. "So you mustn't mix blood...." Good advice, I suppose, but those poor children must have felt mildly bewildered. Mixing blood? Just what was she talking about anyway? How often are small children tempted to mix blood (whatever that means)?

And if you can't explain it better than that, why try?

For the fifth- and sixth-grade pupils, they had a former Romper Room TV actress tap dancing across the stage, then telling little girls, "Don't worry, you can't get AIDS by kissing."

I'm aware that little girls grow up faster than they used to, but do you think many of them were worried about getting AIDS by kissing? Or getting AIDS period? For that matter, how many do you suppose could really stomach the thought of kissing that mischievous sixth-grade boy sitting across the aisle? I do know an elementary school boy who truly seems to be more interested in trading baseball cards, as was his father, than in kissing girls (well, OK, he could be slow) .

The thrust of the newscast was that many parents of the 4- and 5-year-old boys and girls were fairly upset by what the teachers and worn-out actresses were teaching their children. These are their carefree years, the beleaguered parents were protesting. We don't want them worrying about AIDS.

They seemed to have the quaint idea that they, the parents, ought to be deciding the extent of their children's AIDS education, and at what age this wonderful knowledge was to be forced upon them.

But it didn't matter to these particular groups of teachers and their administrators. We know what is best, they insisted, and it's best that your children are told about mixing blood in kindergarten and contaminated needles and sexual intercourse and anal intercourse and whatever else we choose to tell them in the fifth grade.

In a column Dec. 6 George Will writes about New York City school administrators in conflict with their school board because they want to introduce at the elementary school level an AIDS curriculum that includes books called Daddy's Roommate and Gloria Goes to Gay Pride. Preschoolers would have to do with a gay-lesbian coloring book, poor things.

From kindergarten to sixth grade, though, the children will have to read (if the administrators have their way) books with a glossary that includes the definitions of a dental dam, oral sex and anilingus. I suppose that mean teachers are prepared to define anilingus (oral sex involving the anus), as if this is of general interest to, say, the average third grader.

Time magazine ran a picture last week of one of the illustrations from Daddy's Roommate. It shows two men in bed together. Of course the illustration is politically correct: One of the men is young and white; the other appears older, and he is black. You can see why the educators want so much to introduce this book into the curriculum; it teaches several kinds of tolerance at once.

There is some merit to the argument, I suppose, that schoolchildren ought to have some knowledge about AIDS. Some children are born with this terrible disease that the homosexual community has thrust upon the nation, and presumably some of these unfortunate children come into contact with other children in the public schools. The teachers were also teaching against discrimination, a noble idea; no one wants to see a child shunned on the playground.

But do we want teachers showing kindergartners pictures of men in bed together (the men were turning off the light and preparing snuggle in for the night) and teaching them to be tolerant of this form of adult behavior? Just a few short years ago activity was illegal in most states -- and may still be in a few.

And showing 5-year-olds this kind of picture might have gotten you arrested....

It is, obviously, an awkward and tragic situation. But it seems to me that these groups of educators, at least, were a long way from having the solution. And that the final decision on controversial societal curriculum and upon what age schoolchildren should have it imposed upon them can never be left to the likes of them.

Bill Zellmer

Cape Girardeau