The price of innocence: teachers, gender, childhood sexuality, HIV and AIDS in early schooling

Drawing from data collected during interviews with grade 2 teachers who work in a black workingclass township school, this paper explores the meanings that teachers attach to HIV and AIDS education. It is argued that the relationship of many teachers to the subject of HIV and AIDS is inscribed within regulatory forces based on the notion of childhood sexual innocence which uphold and construct a particular version of childhood which is racialized, ‘classed’ and gendered. Despite the urgency of addressing young children’s right to HIV and AIDS education, teaching discourses mobilize a notion of innocence which culminates in fear and anxiety around expressions of sexuality in early childhood. Throughout the paper shows that while teachers’ constructions of childhood are formidable, they are not irreversible since teachers point in contradictory ways to young children’s sexual agency. The significance of starting early with young children together with the calamitous effects of HIV and AIDS in South Africa indicate that we must begin confronting the HIV and AIDS pandemic and start to develop HIV and AIDS reduction and prevention programmes appropriate to the early years of schooling. The findings reported herein have implications for teachers’ work in the development of such programmes.