Missouri State Flag
The state
of Missouri does not require school districts to follow their mandates,
located in the Missouri School Improvement Program, for educating
students about HIV/AIDS prevention education. To the contrary, Missouri
enforces student school accreditation standards – 2001, which requires
health class requirements. The health class should include basic health
education including tobacco, alcohol, and HIV/AIDS prevention. During
elementary schooling, the student should gain comprehensive health
knowledge, but without any time requirements. For middle school, the
requirements for health class are a minimum of 1500 minutes. Finally, in
high school the requirement is for a basic health course with a minimum
of 0.5 credits – desired 1.0 credit, out of 40.5 credits. These numbers
do not reflect how much time is actually allocated to teaching about
HIV/AIDS prevention at each grade level in health class. The state
should require each school to focus more on AIDS, especially in those
zip codes where it is a major problem. Missouri requires specific
guidelines for the content taught in health class. The guidelines
require all information to be presented accurately both medically and
factually. In addition, it requires teachers to teach students that
abstinence is the preferred method for not contracting the disease.
Teachers must also present the risk associated with adolescent sex and
present the topic of contraceptive focusing on both the successes and
failures. Finally, guidelines require that school districts notify and
receive the consent of parents to allow their children to participate in
HIV/AIDS programs (1).
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