Sex, Death and the Education of Children

P/B • 15.88 x 1.91 x 22.86 cm • 264 pages
ISBN 9780807734056

Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS

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.