Primary schoolchildren are frequently shielded from education on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to protect their innocence. In countries like South Africa, where AIDS is particularly widespread, it is especially important to address prevention with younger boys and girls as active social agents with the capacity to engage with AIDS as gendered and sexual beings. This volume addresses the question of children's understanding of AIDS, not simply in terms of their dependence but as active participants in the interpretation of their social worlds.

The volume...

This book is an ethnography of teachers and children in grades 1 and 2, and presents arguments about why we should take gender and childhood sexuality seriously in the early years of South African primary schooling. Taking issue with dominant discourses which assumes children s lack of agency, the book questions the epistemological foundations of childhood discourses that produce innocence. It examines the paradox between teachers dominant narratives of childhood innocence and children s own conceptualisation of gender and sexuality inside the classroom, with peers, in heterosexual games,...