USING A DIFFERENT LENS FOR HIV and AIDS EDUCATION ...

INTEGRATING THE DISINTEGRATED: HIV AND AIDS CONTEXT
HIV and AIDS and sexuality education is being
offered at schools, both at junior and senior
level. After much discussion on this issue, and
the limited impact it has on learners, there was
consensus amongst members that this was not
effective enough and often not achieving the
resultant behaviours in terms of healthy
lifestyles in the face of the HIV and AIDS
pandemic. Furthermore, most of the
knowledge at school is formally transferred
during the Life Orientation lessons – which
learners often pay little attention to, as they
find the content boring and repetitive. Some
of the reasons for this include „teacher and
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learner information fatigue‟, „lack of creative
methods and resources‟, „cultural diversity‟ as
well as „cultural and language barriers‟.
Another important factor was the apathy
amongst most teachers who are of the opinion
that HIV and AIDS education is solely the
responsibility of the Life Orientation teacher.
The group working on the storyboard decided
on the heading/title “Integrating the
disintegrated: HIV and AIDS” as we are of the
opinion that HIV and AIDS education should
be a collective initiative within a school and
should therefore be incorporated into lessons