Sex, Death and the Education of Children

In this work on AIDS and the ways in which we do not educate children about it, Silin has created a literary register that can comprehend the many languages of his life: language for what he has learned about the education of young children; language for what he has learned about love and sexuality as a gay man; and, language for what he has learned about life and death in the age of AIDS. Refusing what he calls our "passion for ignorance", Silin wrenches what he knows out of the categories of discretion and avoidance that confine knowledge. He shows us how the early childhood curriculum deploys a false altruism, pretending to protect children from what adults are afraid to talk about. He shows us how we cultivate ignorance in children and in each other by refusing to hear and respond to what they and we already know.

HIV/AIDS - the Politics of an Epidemic; Responding to Children in Time; HIV/AIDS Education - Toward a Collaborative Curriculum; Developmentalism and the Aims of Education; Contours of Ignorance; Curricular Languages - Queerying Feminists; How Do We Know? and Other Questions of the Closet; The Politics of Identity and the Differences Inside Me.