Focus 580; Learning by Heart: AIDS And School Children in Americas Communities

In part in one way a sexually transmitted disease and there was a good deal of blaming of the victim. We approached it as if the people who were infected with AIDS were infected because of a willful act freely taken. And if you set beside that the idea that a child is is an innocent being that is deserving of all of the protection that we can give it here these two ideas very very much in very much in conflict and yet here is a case where the two things are joined together and perhaps that's what makes it so. One of the things that makes it so difficult to approach this topic. I think that's right it's a very tough borderline because as parents whatever our own personal politics may be we tend to be very conservative when it comes to our own children because particularly because of all of the meanings that comes freighted with the scariness. Connotation attached idea of what a child might have is what a

child might somehow against all the facts might somehow spread aids to others just scares people sometimes literally so I guess that that you know that the the again the what makes it so difficult is that you know we tried to do something that we tried to approach in a rational manner and as rational as we might be in so many situations. Rationality when when people talk about their children breaks down completely. And in fact I was just talking about it with a fellow staff member just this morning who basically said the same thing. And it seems to reflect the feeling of so many people that perhaps with themselves they can trust what they think they know about AIDS and what they are told and yet somehow when it comes down to their children the trust completely breaks down and there's no. People are our most motivated most by their desire to protect their children. In fact

in some of these communities I think they know that the parents got involved because they felt that nobody else was going to do it that somehow they had to take control and the connection there. You know the duty of the parents so strongly felt is that protection of the child and that somehow in them. In the face of that very very strong emotional sort of derive all rationality breaks down and there's almost nothing you can say to someone in that position to get them to to think differently. But it's why at the very outset of the book I ask the question I pose the situation suppose your 8 year old came home from school and said that a classmate had AIDS how would you how would you parent react and I think Kerry you've described Pete a very common phenomenon I don't know anybody who when they first hear that news and these are stories that I'm talking about are powerful paled and I think that I think it matters that there are not just

health places out there that could be champagne Urbana and may well be chatter about it next year or the year after. Given the spread of the of the diseases that parents always stilly in 1989 I react with huge amounts of fear. And what differentiates those places that behave like Kokomo Indiana those places that really fought hard to keep a kid with AIDS a case Ryan White out of school it made him a bashful figure for all of us. They put him through it with a bullet through the window and they insult the word faggot sprayed on his head on his locker what differentiates those places from other towns. Like Fonzie Massachusetts. Little by no means liberal and plays on the corner of that state which at the same time is admitting another 13 year old in full effect. School is not a perception people had when the story first broke in their town of a dude's first hit it was that in

the one place but not the other in slums but not coke. There was someone in the schools the superintendent some school figure who people trusted in the new Who did his homework who didn't just succumb to the fear and panic who learned about the disease called up in that case the Centers for Disease Control found out who read everything that he could get his hands on and he then took it upon himself to educate people about the other thing that happened in the town. Come out right. And those prices are higher. The verses as well mater on the right which is a very upper middle class Chicago suburb on the on the one side and and but the Chicago Latino neighborhood of Towson both of which wind up wind up being being very positive tales in a book I write is not the parents or are it's not the parents are fearful of those places but there is an occasion for them to learn to talk through their fears talk to the doctors to challenge them

to learn about how AIDS is spread. To make themselves feel better about what's going on. And then in the end once that happens what's Transco feared understanding. I found this in any number of places in the country. All this rather was the compassion that Americans can fairly be proud of. Come to the surface of some of these stories really are tales about people not just saying it's OK if this kid is in school but gosh look at what that family's going to look at how much suffering how much how can we help what can we do to make them really a part of our lives. You wonder. I suppose you wonder though if that's if that is such a natural human impulse why you don't see it everywhere why it's got to be so carefully cultivated. Well I think fear and compassion are both human impulses. Getting into the sociobiology is back and as you mentioned in the end of the introductory remarks when it comes to Kit

I fear for what will happen to them as a barrier and the preservation of those kids really does need to be is an instinctive biological kind of response. But and in those places which which really went nuts on this issue one Georgia town called Ocilla where a child was kept out of school not because he had AIDS not because he had the AIDS virus. He in fact tested negative for AIDS but because his mother carried the fire and was eventually let back in school by this hysterical community only after some publicity and only after the mother agreed she would live apart from her son if he was going to go to school. But in those places there wasn't. A leader in the community a doctor or an educator or someone who said hey let's not rush into panic but to learn about this thing first let's understand what we're dealing with here before we go crazy. And we're people actually can talk to somebody who isn't just saying this is terrible this is terrible but could actually

actually have a chance to talk to someone who understands what's going on. If they can work their way through those fears then it seems to me the compassion is a chance to urge but but where there's only hysteria and Koke of of their steps that was only the start of it was nobody really speaking out forcefully for Whiteside except the family and they were really cast as outsiders. It didn't count they were biased parties story of people coming in. Especially with nothing but here it is. There's no other emotion that can take Keiko out. Pretty tricky. Social and social and political dynamic. Towns across the country. Our guest this morning David Kirk he is a professor of public policy at University of California at Berkeley and is the principal author of a book learning by heart AIDS in school children in America's communities. If you have questions or comments you'd like to be a part of the conversation 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free anywhere that you hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Ryan White became a

national celebrity had his case received national attention and that may in fact be what made it more difficult or charge that the. The situation with a lot of us and them kind of thinking the another case which seems to have some parallels to Ryan Whites case the one which you talked about was in Massachusetts in the Swansea Massachusetts there was a 13 year old boy with AIDS at a junior high school there and one of the interesting features about this case is that the officials at the school and and many people strongly felt that confidentiality was very important and in fact that this boy's name his his last name was never made public until after he had died and he died. I think a year and a half after he contracted AIDS and so there there there was not the kind of attention focused on this or at least not on him

that there was on Ryan White do you think that that made a difference to the way the media covered Ryan White. Was that counterproductive I think it I think it makes a difference in a couple ways for the cow for the parents themselves versus the sponsors terrorist banishing past like crazy. But that the child really behaved within the norms and standards of the town and coke and I was able to rationalize what it was doing to Ryan White because after all he broke the code of silence in effect the family went public. I mean in fact they really there was very little they could do other than going public because there were no other allies except the media and nobody noticed but the but the whites were castigated as fortune hunters they were published of the seekers they were they were collecting stars they were they were doing all these things they were they were they were interested in movies Hollywood and not in their own lives. Always the publisher they became a way for the people of Kokomo

to shun this kid. They thought of it as not part of the place where it is and where since one day everybody in town knew that Mark as he was referred to it in the press until a die was Mark Hoyle and indeed there were camera crews and reporters camped out on the oil suburban front yard wanting to get in wanting to get to get a story. But without the whales talking because they were they were absolutely Turman that their son would be able to live out his life outside the glare of publicity and with school. Superintendent saying to a hapless reporter from the Providence Journal God help you for what you're about to do to this child when the reporter broached the possibility of mentioning names but that that made it possible for the town to talk about the issue of AIDS because the issue is certainly there and the school had gone public with the fact that there was a student who had AIDS in the schools to talk about AIDS without talking about about the kid at another level. The media naturally enough has fixated on two stories

Ryan White and the Wright family in Arcadia. They're the two high drama stories Ryan White this winsome 13 year old kid banished from a town articulate about how badly he's being treated. The town comes off and the media accounts I think somewhat too simplistically and when I when I was writing about and talking to the people of color clearly came to understand much better what they went through. If it came across as the sort of no nothing this is a bad place and then there's Arcadia Arcadia Florida where this where the Wright family send its kids to school after fighting its way through the courts to be able to do so and it suffers screams and threats not senate azan and rocks and finally its houses burned and the family forced police how will that burning house became a hugely potent symbol and an image so I think that what that did to them. If Americans think about AIDS and kids in school usually what they get what people going to think of is Ryan White that

poor kid on the cover of People magazine and the re kids who were sent off someplace else by someone so hapless this thing just checks their their lives and their art and that's meant that the other stories the more hopeful stories stories like the sponsor Massachusetts story or the or the Wilmette story and there by the way the young boy who in the book I call Jamie McArdle is really gorgeous tail has just has just now died and the family is beginning to talk about how well it was trees but is willing to is willing to talk to the public. For the first time those stories have been told and so and so pounds when the issue arises panic all over again because they think that life is going to be awful awful and it's going to have to look like Arcadia House is going to have to be burnt down. And parents are afraid to talk to school officials school officials tell them Don't tell anybody about this we're going to keep this tireless secret because we don't place is going to go

crazy. And in both of our senses in terms of life inside the communities and life outside fat fixation on the bad cases and the relative inattention to the stories that are positive. It seems to me because it is a bad and not happy picture of the range of American reaction to AIDS. Again if you compare the least in two communities a coke allowance onesie and. There there one unfortunate outcome and the one happy outcome. Aside from that did it change life in in either of these two places. I think to some extent a town or ACC or a neighborhood is going to be touched for a long time by how it deals with a discussion we toss around the word community a whole lot it gets pretty sloppy jargon that academics use. Journalists used like the truth is we don't have a whole lot

of communities in the country and we don't have people getting together to make moral decisions we we really are more moral couch potatoes most time we sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by it. So in a place like Fonzie which which really wasn't a community it was a collection of little villages of French Canadian and Portuguese and old line Yankees. When that town which had basically come together only to say no to taxes for many many years cited the fact that Mark was only one of them. They really were are finding themselves a message about what they were like at their best. And that stuck and it stuck in lots of ways both in terms of port the schools and and other people have had trouble. The girl there navigated a very serious operation family didn't have the money. Pam pitched and raised seventy five dollars. If you go to. You go to the California coastal town of a task there would be a California suburban community which people fled from L.A. and San Francisco

hopes of finding Arcadia if you go to those places where the AIDS stories were not so with AIDS or AIDS is not so well handled where the children wound up and suffering really be to live payment to have a parent. You find people very still very defensive doff unhappy about what it was that that happened. They do the kind of thing that I described earlier they blame they blame the kid they blame the family they blame the media they blame the doctors they blame the state government they blame everybody they they find subset of N the gays they blame anybody that they can think of to blame except looking to themselves and their own responses and there's there's anger and there is blaming and there's defensiveness and there's denial they tend to succumb to retell the stories in a way that makes them look less bad than that and that it proves their their behavior really was and I think that that factor winds up corroding life in these towns even is even is spotty and the Wilmots community comes to feel better

about itself. So life is life is richer because when when people talk about the risks the risks of a kid with AIDS going to school are documents that this kid go to school is just tiny. Somebody could not have a go at what they don't talk about is the very real risk that if you say that this kid parents you can't go to school you've got to be honest that you're sending to all those other children that terrible have expressed about intolerance bigotry. We're going to try to keep our lives. Reich that's a price that really needs to be to be taken by people I think to liberate What message are you sending to your kids. We're going to drive this child out. Our guest this morning is David Kirk he is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of learning by heart.

AIDS in school children in America's communities. It's a book just published by the Rutgers University Press that offers case studies of nine different schools in different places around the country and the way that they responded to the challenge of having a child in school with AIDS. If you have questions or you have comments you might pick up a telephone call us and join in on the conversation here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and we have a toll free line that's going anywhere that you hear us. 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. You note the fact that. The question of kids in school with AIDS is one that well an awful lot of people in positions of authority try to dodge. It seems that it was perhaps not so much a case of people making people making bad decisions or wrong decisions but trying to make no decision. And it

starts right at the level of the federal government. You you talk about the fact that discrimination in education has traditionally been a matter for the federal government. And yet when it came to children with AIDS the local people were left out on their own to to decide. Even people on the state level state health and education officials they didn't want to touch it. And you know perhaps one one can be harsh on local school officials and yet you have to recognize the fact that they didn't get a great deal of help in making their decision. I think I think what's stunning in fact is how conscientious so many people are here is here is Jack McCarthy sponsor Massachusetts. First place that I go to work like a burly Irishman a one time football coach. History teachers 30 years in the school came in to be superintendent to rescue a district that was really in

bad shape. It brought it back together a tough no nonsense kind of guy certainly not somebody who'd ever dealt with anything anything like that. True of almost all the stories there's I mean eight is a moment the defining moment for many of these people's lives and what is Jack McCarthy did he pick up. Telephone calls at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta says Tell me about AIDS and he calls up state public health folks to get the state's leading epidemiologists to get it to a degree. Tell him about AIDS and so he and school committee filled with people none of whom have more than a high school education all of them have been born and raised in that little town. Determined that it's no satisfaction what to do and to prove that as true now there really was no leadership coming out of out of the White House except for the statements of Surgeon General Cooper who was the one the one of the lonely lonely

light on this question and for his efforts he was much reviled by everyone everyone else. I envy you the stories of a chapter that talks a bit about national leadership questions of a. Image that the image that that really fueled by anger about what was happening was a team that never was. Imagine what would have happened after that. And that house was torched in Arcadia Florida. Three children were carrying the AIDS virus were driven out of town and if Ronald Reagan the great communicator did so well by so many issues public had taken it upon himself to do a fireside chat in which he talked about how AIDS is not transmitted. Had those three children the three young bright children sitting on his lap and at his knee. What a powerful message reassuring message to America that would have been how inconceivable absolute inconceivable Ronald Reagan might might

have done that but I think that that that that when judgment is passed. Oh you just cut off a I'm in a library. Yeah you're still there. We got you. Good. That's cute. OK worst things have happened. That's cute. At a time to go back to that back to Ronald Reagan. Here is that here is a moment in which the administration could be faulted not just for the money that it didn't get it but it didn't distribute it and its unwillingness to adopt discrimination. But for the absolute lack of leadership on this question and its silence at a time when some words made such a difference one can one can hope that George Bush will be that cautious George Will will eventually face something on the subject. And what we

have thus far is only of a small. All welcome symbol of Barbara Bush a man who had at age a couple weeks ago. But it also happened on the state level I mean every everyone was sort of looking you know looking to somebody else to provide the leadership all all the way up and down the line where it seems. Sure that's certainly right although this is the kind of there's no reason that AIDS is classically a question which demands a national response. You'd like state leaders to do better and indeed they should have done better at that. Now in some states like like my home state of California they did pretty well and York had it pretty well and yet you know other states with large age caseload like like Florida terribly and in Illinois they sometimes do terribly and sometimes to die Well I think Illinois is still notorious for that for the marriage license test a lot of unique and unique in the country on this issue but on other on other side state issue the state did well one of the things that looking at AIDS teaches you about is

how it is how American federalism really works you know what happens when issues fall between the cracks they're not really local to not really state and not really Federal or which everybody is ducking responsibility for. How do they get played out. And so to it it's an issue the toadies lying about about the whole idea of what we think about rights and courts and court decisions because they too played a part of the story and I had a pretty ambiguous one I think it also says it has something to say about this notion of democracy and how people are involved in making decisions about their lives and their their communities so I'm not quite sure how to articulate it and yet I think it that is an angle of this story too. But I think it aids AIDS story is and it's an odd way of looking at a bear and discovering something about our truest selves and if we start out thinking about it as something that's out there it's it's not in

Champaign-Urbana it's not it will bed its audience wants it but of course of course it is it is in all of those places and and the way the way in which we confront it really it seems to me speaks of the end of the character to what we're about. One of the one of the pleasures of of of telling these tales of kind of talking about up country is discovering a number of groups that have formed a grassroots organization that work with states and Kitson And it's been a pleasure to contribute half the book royalties to those groups. One of the pleasures of finding those school leaders and ministers and newspaper reporters who really were are bigger than their done their job really who really did good selves proud. Those stories need those. There are absolutely the other stories that be opportunistic politicians and a racist school folks and bigoted community members but they

but their their both their community and in that sense what what AIDS really dies for us as individuals and almost everything it touches as it shows us something that that sometimes we don't want to see sometimes we're delighted to see it. Their hope might be out there it could be checked. Do you think that we are learning anything on this as time goes along. Or are we still sort of stumbling over that the same you know shoes. It's hard it's hard to get a fix on that. There was a there was a story in a paper the other day of a poll done in New York City which is a place that should know AIDS better than anybody else and know how how risky it is in the world of business or schools. The question was asked of a sample of the five businessmen would you fire somebody who you knew had the HIV virus even though he had no symptoms of disease. And a third of the. People said yes they would or they weren't sure and then

when the question was would you fire somebody who had AIDS even though he was what he was capable of carrying on fully carrying carrying on a higher percentage of considerably higher percentage suggest a tiresome circumstance in fact that's a pretty that's a pretty sad sad commentary on how long and slow this learning process is. After we haven't had stories after the Arcadia as to the Arcadia story is the temper of 1987 but that have spread out of those children. And sometimes we haven't heard stories because nice things happen but the Rays moved to Tampa Florida and they're doing just find out which is which the pleasure to be able to report. But sometimes we haven't heard because people school people and parents panicked by this have just tried to keep us at a deep dark secret and had to live with the till until indeed in the end with their their child died. It's clearly important for people still to talk their way through this stuff because just like that

fellow the radio station you were mentioning at the top of the hour. People need in fact to confront the issue not just intellectually but emotionally to feel their way through the Senate questions. I think someday we will get to the point where people really understand in their heart that AIDS is more scary in terms of its impact on school life and so very many of things we take for granted probably lots less scary than the asbestos at school buildings but for the forseeable future those conversations are really important. I do hope that that people who read learning by heart will in effect be able to reverse some of that. I mean to go through those stories which are which are which are which are really what got tales of of with with pretty powerful emotion attached and pretty powerful thinking attached to it come out. I've I've worked my way through some of that stuff. Now I understand something I did maybe approach. It crashed directly.

I just thinking that because you were just talking about you named s best as particularly but you were as you were alluding to that all of the difficulties that kids do confront in school and things that we worry about in it. And I guess I think that you know perhaps the reasons that the feelings ran so deep here is that some parents maybe maybe most parents maybe all parents feel that there is so much they want to protect their children from. And there is really in in a practical way very little that they can do and that somehow the extra adding on of AIDS just pushed that frustration to the breaking point it was the proverbial last straw I think for a lot of people on this long list of stuff they saw as being threatening to their children. I think that's true. And I also think it's true that all the things that I so seated with compounded by those fears it makes it harder for parents to listen when I think of what what

what what. But it's all those terrible things that it take to be many people but in the sense that we've got our eye on the apples. But the last of these mysteries of these of these kind of stories are truly hard for anybody to sort out all the risks come pouring down in our heads. AIDS is one of those risks but unlike al around the apple it was associated with think that parents want to keep their kids light years away from. We have about 15 minutes left again and I was the one to say to people who are listening if you have questions you have comments we welcome your participation in the show. You can call in 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign-Urbana Sol 3 anywhere else that you may be listening. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Our guest is David Kirk. He is a professor of public policy and lecturer in law at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book learning

by heart. It's published by Rutgers University Press it seems. In the in the places where school officials successfully dealt with the problem they walked a very thin line and those who strayed too far to either side found themselves in trouble and that success seems to me to have to do with a combination of openness and and at the same time not. Not letting the not letting the concern of the parents steer you too much. I guess that you know on 100 one of the great room. What what what. Yes school leaders would not. That's not how we're going to sign it. And so it's you know it's a it's a balance between you know obviously in in some places they

went too far one way and tried to keep as much of the information under wraps as possible that like the New York story where they said that you know in somewhere in the hall and all of the New York school system there's a kid with AIDS but we're not going to tell you who when and where and you know maybe the other pole is too is to allow yourself to be made a partner or perhaps an agent of the parents whose one desires to get the kid out. The middle course the one that's hard to steer is. You know almost staying between those two things trying to keep people informed and yet being trying to be a firm leader and that seems really tough and I guess I think that school school officials and I are proverbially some of my best friends are school officials that have their own numbers of figures and school figures in the book who are generally brave generally brave men and women. They are are both professionals and politicians.

And when they get on their professional high horse and say truck drivers we know basket there is a kid with AIDS some place in the York City schools some place among the 1 million students. There is one child with this disease and you have a section of New York called Queens where people are going to be a story Clee distrustful of anything that that downtown says all hell is going to break loose and that was a pretty predictable outcome on the other hand. Those school superintendents that end administrator tried really to play politicians to check the wind to go the way the wind was blowing wound up running behind their hysterical community and it would often happen to them and something that I say to school administrators. Pragmatic matter. Tearing the middle course that is being at once a sense of the professional a sense of a politician and a live human being is the only thing you really can do that. But even in those towns where places like Kokomo where the where the superintendent as Mrs. Myers was really running a kind of popularity

contest. It's likely that you're going to lose in the end. That in that case ended a couple of others courts including the queen story that courts would rule against you in the trial would be admitted school again. Where is and where that where the politician professional leader human being really emerges in places like like spondee you get the superintendent getting voted by the towns of the end of that time it counts for this of the year. And more pragmatic way relevantly what they committed by the town. Bottom 5 a junior high school at a community had been like that. A very long time. It is a very fine line but it's it's it's what these folks are paid to do. In fact not succumb to their own fears prejudices and panics. It's not just count the votes and not just stand above the crowd but to leap to lead by example and by conversation by dialogue

and not one of the marks of success of this one thing that's really notable I think is the fact that not a single child was permanently withdrawn from that school. Indeed and I think one of one of a kind of I'm using if I were an ironic story is one girl that was set off to a Procul school for a while by her unhappy parents still live. So yes you could come here but only if you don't tell anybody that you come from sponsoring agree to be tested for AIDS every two weeks and she was she got a perfect sort of dose. The kind of medicine coke that Ryan White came back really understanding very topic about prejudice. First Eric Cantors we have a caller here on our toll free line to welcome some other folks who will talk to this person in our local lines there open 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 its number to call and hear someone for us to talk to right here. Hello. Oh yes I've been listening to the family's considerable interest in our

time or our standing guard county that you were just located in me and are there on the point that you've made are certainly true in Dallas but there is one that I guess I feel I ought to try and explain and that is that the core of that Ryan White was in Broadway's was not not the Kokomo school it was the Pearson Township. Corporate schools and I happen to live in this township and some of the children at school. I certainly paid a lot of attention to all that stuff and a pair of things that you've discussed here all very true and it is true that the program center school didn't rescue Ryan or do anything to help him but the superintendent involved was not the one in Kokomo but was indeed and thank you for thank you that I used I talk about Kokomo because Coke always that is the name of people remember that

the school is actually located in a little place called Bush a village you know and and it it picks up a small part of Kokomo proper as a school district line is drawn but it became it became the Kokomo story and as you also say there was not a whole lot the Kokomo did it as a kind of exemplar of right. I really I really think that the credit that it is probably early sure the difficulties within the school belongs to the Harrison Township School. Not to the problem. Yes that's absolutely right. You know you were just talking on concerning the superintendent I think there are some other aspects to it as well there were going on at that same time some other difficulties of considerable magnitude right in the Harrison schools and I still support time and still do that. And right now it's a red herring because if you were anyway to distract

and secondly the newspaper if you can call to morrow certainly did everything they could to spam frames and free their articles were most in front of the time so you know I you know I did. Set their records straight because the one program didn't do too much that was supportive but they would say I would be working and I can leave right in the back of my radio station deejay who ran the Qur'an and a benefit to raise the money for the for the parents who were opposing opposing r and they got quite a lot of money they got tons of money and it was lots of coconut merchants who chipped in with it where it could be that I sit in my bed family rocking in and by making purchases it in stores and using their drinking their absolutely eyes if any could use a drink in the school system it was a really a crying shame and I think that what you said is also very true about they tried a real recipe for

their kids on democracy and in civility and humanity and I think there were a lot of people who didn't condone it but as you put it point I thought you mean it's very clear there and Norm stood up. Not even me. You too. Take an opposing view. My sense I sense in spending some time there was that it would have been really hard to do it. Sorry are you I feel right about it you know I thought I'm a licensed teacher and I gave some thought to going and saying our future in my home I think I'm perfectly capable of doing that. But I'll tell you the atmosphere here was such that it put fear into you and that scares me a lot I don't like to live in a country in which I'm afraid to do I think it's essential and correct proper thing. But there was a lot of fear and the newspaper contributed to that. Anyway I think it is a very interesting conversation and I'm glad that I it seems to me that if these things are in part about Nana Rice after the fact we're living in a learned anything in life please that you called and I hope there are other people

who are more willing to take the occasion of a book coming out. To look again some years later a baby or dispassionate what it was that that happened until you're about a month in Iraq. You probably know you stop at another school doing great crime to break into the army kind of thing. OK well thank you for the guy I really really enjoyed this program I get a lot of information from it. Well that's great I appreciate it. Thank you thank you. We have I guess about three minutes left. You know Professor curb I guess what I what I keep coming back to and trying to decide for myself is this is this idea the end you talk about it the fact that we like to think even though it's not we like to think about AIDS as something that is distant from us and it is it is much it's easy to talk about what one would do. And yet when you ask when you really ask yourself well what would you

do in that situation whether or how easy it would be to try to be the kind of person that you would like to think you were. You know I got out and I remember I remember one incident like when it I don't bet. Where there was a nine year old boy at this point that he could just just I was in the family's house talking to them about what had gone on as if the family was willing to tell me the most intimate details of their life. This was when he was sitting there because he'd want to be there and they wanted a parent and he felt too shy to talk to me when I asked him I asked him and his mom asked him to talk it was going on he peed out of his head. How did having say his kids treated him well and I said do you give hugs to this kid. He looks up at me look at that hug he gives me a big hug it just seemed like the most natural thing to be about doing it did occur to me for a second but that they are but I was

having a kid with AIDS and this was somehow an issue or other like that when I was looking around for historical analog to these stories I thought about the death of the people who could call the good Gentiles who harbored puce during a Nazi occupied countries or were to have an interviewer asked. But a Polish woman why she did this and the woman was startled she said. I mean just imagine somebody comes to your door and says they're after me I need help. What kind of a beast do you have to be to turn those people away. Seems to be that at some at some level that's what winds up happening to the best people. These these stories that they see that there's someone here who really needs most of all relevant caring and compassion and love from their neighbors. And what is so revealing and so gorgeous are the people who were able to come through it. And I I do hope just in

response to the last caller that the people in places like Ohio which basically an admission of guilt by their by school district. But that cut themselves off from from from their feelings are able to work their way through this and that for them come out the other side. OK. Well we'll have to leave it at that and I have my apologies also to a couple of callers who just called in very late in the program I'm sorry we're just out of time we're going to have to stop but I want to thank you Professor Kirk very much for talking with us. Thanks for having me. Our guest David Kirby is the author of the book learning by heart AIDS in school children in America's communities and the Rutgers University Press is the publisher it's brand new it's just out.