Africa Aids Education Series is an OBE, integrated series of books that aims to ensure that one of the government’s indicators that will be used to measure ‘how much progress is being made in the fight against Aids” is met. This indicator is stated as ‘the proportion of children leaving primary school who are fully informed of the causes and methods of transmission of HIV”.
The series, which is available in all 11 official languages, only partially meets this objective of fully informing primary school children. However, the information it does provide is succinct and direct. By using the glossary and with additional explanations, exercises and activities such as role-playing that are detailed in the Educator’s Guide, the information will be accessible to children at the intermediate level. The series has been tested by educators and children in grades 1 – 7 and was found to be usable throughout the primary school.
The series is very attractive, in full colour, with clear, large text and with most of the illustrations uncomplicated and easily understandable. Each book is a variation on the theme of Aids with some repetition, which serves to emphasize the essential components. It was designed for use across the curriculum as the authors believe that all educators have the responsibility to teach learners about HIV/Aids.
The Educator’s Guide receives full marks for layout and content and it will ensure that preparation of the material is a simple exercise. Every illustration is large enough and clear enough to enable educators to scan the information contained therein at a glance.
It looks at ways of honing various skills such as thinking and reasoning; developing and organising ideas; explaining cause-and-effect; and role-playing. For personal development it looks at considering and interpreting the emotions of others; how to appropriately express and cope with a range of emotions; and how to demonstrate compassion by caring for people.
The questions, activities, information and role-playing, which breathe life into the series for learners, explain and elaborate on the text and illustrations, ensuring that learners can make the information their own. The ways in which these are designed enable educators to use the information across the curriculum.
The most accessible book in the series is Care for Us and Accept Us, the touching story of Nkosi Johnson, the brave boy who lived life to the full while campaigning for Aids awareness. His mother had HIV and he was born with it. It will help children to make sense of the HIV/Aids disease on their own terms. Children and Aids extends and expands the human side of HIV/Aids and gives examples of children and babies with HIV/Aids, their stories and how they are surviving.
Portions of the book The Truth about Aids, Children and Aids and Rights and Aids are excellent inclusions as they debunk some of the myths which have grown up around Aids. The information on nutrition and vitamins in Aids in Africa is timely and important, helping children to understand that people can do something to help themselves through eating a varied selection of foods.
There are, however, some puzzling inconsistencies, as well as factual errors, in the series. In the book Masakhane: Working Together to Stop Aids we have a photograph of President Thabo Mbeki with the caption ‘South African president Thabo Mbeki is participating in the fight against Aids, but he needs your support”. This is disingenuous at best. It has been widely reported that Mbeki has said that he knows no one who has died of Aids. And, of course, for years the government has refused medicines to pregnant women who have HIV and they have consequently passed the virus on to their babies.
Secondly, in the book entitled What are HIV and Aids the author states that one of the only three ways that one can get HIV is ‘by allowing blood from an infected person to get into their own bloodstream”. She does not warn that one way of doing so is through a blood transfusion. In fact, in the book The Truth about Aids she erroneously states ‘Donating blood and blood transfusions, where a patient is given blood at a hospital, are also safe”.
This contradicts what is stated in the book entitled Living with Aids. Here we are told that the virus ‘must have been in the person’s blood for at least four weeks before it shows up in a test”. Further, that ‘the virus can still be passed on to other people during this window period”. In other words, one can unknowingly pass on the infection to another person through donating blood which is tested, because the test does not detect the virus during this window period. There is documented evidence of blood infected in this way having been transfused into patients, and yet readers are reassured that blood transfusions are safe.
On the balance though, the information in the books is well-presented and valuable for both educators and learners. As with all books, it is important to appraise them with a critical eye, and where contradictions or uncertainies emerge, to seek clarity through other resources.