Sex Education in High Schools

Introduction

The sensitive association between children and sexuality has made sex education one of the most heated debates in the American culture wars. Questions of who should teach what about sex in public schools have been debated throughout the post-World War II era, perhaps most intensely since the 1980s. While America's relatively high rates of teenage pregnancy and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs, also known as sexually transmitted infections, or STIs) have made sex education appear to be a practical necessity, the rise of the Christian Right has placed particular emphasis on the moral dimensions of sex education. As a consequence, sex education in America has become a political issue impacting debates at every level from local to national and, in part, facilitating the rise of the Christian Coalition's grassroots efforts to build a political coalition from school boards up to higher offices (Moran, Pp. 29).

Discussion

In the early 20th century, schooling played an increasingly large role in the lives of growing numbers of American children and adolescents, and the scope of curricula widened accordingly. The presence of these children, often hailing from working-class ethnic families with unfamiliar social customs, the concurrent “invention” by influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall of “adolescence” as a sexually fraught and even perilous time, and this expanded pedagogical purpose, gave rise to the first sex education curricula (Luker, Pp. 14).

Over the course of the 20th century, sex education became a contested but consistent feature in the American schoolhouse, its emphasis evolving from social hygiene; to courtship, marriage, and the family more broadly; to comprehensive programs including homosexuality and contraception; to the most recent curricula that teach abstinence from sexual activity as adolescents' only reliable recourse against pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Unlike many contemporary education initiatives that rely primarily on federal support, sex education has largely emerged from local, state, and private impetus. For this reason, this controversial curricular question proves a rich site from which to explore the reformist impulses that animate everyday citizens to engage passionately in the construction—and often dismantling—of educational policy and practice.

Current Trends and Viewpoints

Sex has been a part of the public school curriculum and a subject of debate since at least the nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century, moral crusaders such as Anthony Comstock sought a total ban on any “sexually explicit” material, including sex education materials. Reformers, primarily women's groups and Protestant organizations, sought to educate children about the moral dangers of sex. The primary advocates for sex education were sex hygienists, often led by medical professionals, who sought greater public knowledge about sexuality in order to prevent the spread of STDs. The limited curricula adopted at the time tended to focus primarily on sexual restraint, with an emphasis on the biology of sex and the dynamics of family life. In the 1950s, family life curricula were widely adopted and approved by professional associations (Levine, Pp. 31).

Today, sex education curricula vary significantly, but abstinence-plus programs like Sex Respect remain widely ...