Textarea Not Displaying

I have this textarea in my form that is not displaying data. BUT when you look at the source you can see the text in the 'value'.here is the code:Code:

<textarea name="txtgen" value="<%=rs("gen_av_m")%>" cols="138" rows="5" id="txtgen"><%=rs("gen_av_m")%></textarea>

there are no error messages.