Learning by heart

by David L. Kirp

This book tells a series of closely linked tales about AIDS, communities and children, beginning with Ryan White's exclusion from his school in his home town of Kokomo, Indiana, in 1985. While the American public has heard pieces of the Ryan White story, the author provides a detailed, moving report on that first national case, and then describes other cases in other communities across the country. Together, these stories tell us much about how we regard our children, how we deal with sex and dread and death, how we are led in times of crisis by politicians and bureaucrats and judges, and how we govern ourselves. These potent accounts reveal what we as human beings have the potential of becoming, both at our most frightened and our most enlightened. The ways that, as neighbors and as a nation, we respond to the children who seek entrance to our schools says a great deal about the state of our civilization. Ultimately, the author argues, these tales show that it is in communion with one