Welcome Jessica!

Jessica, Welcome to the Lake.

Heather, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Thanks, Heather. I’m glad to be here!

Thanks to you, too, Bev!

It’s my pleasure, Bev. I’m excited about the topic, and I think Jessica has a really unique and needed approach to it.

Jessica, why North Carolina?

So, I think it might be best, Jessica, if we started out just by talking about what drew you to the topic of Risky Lessons, and why you came to it with the particular perspective you did.

Welcome to FDL Jessica and Heather!

I have not had a chance to read the book but the topic is obviously one that should be of interest to any responsible parent.

I started this book in North Carolina, where the state was one of the first to pass abstinence-only legislation for its public schools. The next year, President Clinton signed the welfare reform that brought abstinence-only to federal policy. In many ways, the North Carolina debates and instruction in the late 1990s pointed to debates that were about to become a national issue.

Thanks, dakine01. I agree. I also hope the topic is of interest to even those of who aren’t parents. We all have an investment in what young people are learning in schools. These are our neighbors, our communities. What we teach in the schools signals what we think is OK for everyone–youth and adults alike.

Of the three schools you studied, what were the sex ed curricula they were using? It might also be helpful to talk a little about the differences between abstinence-only, abstinence-plus and comprehensive sex education curricula.

Welcome, Jessica, and thanks so much for this thoughtful research.

As a progressive pastor, I was particularly intrigued by the way in which you captured the mindset and actions of the religious conservatives in this book. In the course of your research, what surprised you the most coming out of the religious world?

Thanks, Heather. I came to this topic because I was interested in the ways that sexuality becomes defined as both a *problem* in our society and an important source of pleasure and self-fulfillment. How do we learn to pursue happiness in an arena that has defined as so fraught with danger? I was mulling this over generally when the sex ed debates took off in North Carolina. I realized that as communities came together to debate sex education for young people, they would also be debating sexual norms for the community as a whole.

Peterr brings up the context of religion in this. Obviously, a given religion or religious community will have their social norms and prescriptions, and then we have all the other kinds of roles and norms from teens own social circles, families, a given region or town, the works.

Do you feel like the schools and communities you studied are pretty representative of the state of sex ed, and how it’s been going, in the U.S. as a whole?

I was in three schools: one private Quaker school serving more affluent and progressive families, one public serving many African American and low-income families, and another public serving low- and middle-income families, most of whom were white. The private school was not accountable to the legislation and taught a truly comprehensive curriculum. The public schools were comprehensive and abstinence-only, respectively. Interestingly, inside the classroom, the two public schools didn’t vary that much. That’s how I came to realize the limited reach of policy.

I’m single but just reading Heather’s intro reminded me of having the “talk” with my father when I was 12.

He noticed that I was carrying a condom in my wallet and called me into his room. He apologized for having gone through my wallet then asked me:
“Do you know what those are for?”
“yassir”
Do you know how to use them?”
“Yassir”
“Make damn sure you do”

A couple of years before he died, I thanked him for the very best advice he ever gave me.

Welcome to the Lake, Heather and Jessica.

This looks look an essential book for all teachers of the pubescent.

So, while in two of the schools, the formal curriculum varied pretty intensely (I’m assuming, since those curricula do tend to be radically different), what happened with those curricula in the classroom shared some common threads? What were they?

I appreciate the question and comment, Peterr. One of the most surprising things to me about my research was how much I came to respect and appreciate people with whom I disagreed. I interviewed a number of conservative Christians for this book about sex education, and I profoundly respected their efforts to make a world that they thought was best for their children. I didn’t agree with their vision of the world, but I respected their commitment and their willingness to take a stand. Sometimes I worried that the progressives didn’t have the same willingness. Or, at least, the same ability to make their argument convincingly.

Hi, Professor Fields. Thanks for your valuable thinking on sex ed. Curious why we as a society remain focussed on the fear-based approach of stopping STDs or pregnancy. I know abstinence advocates might say it punishes the sinn but it is not a winning strategy to get someone to change behavior in the long run. What have proven to be the most successful ways to teach safer, healthier sex?

Folks often seem to cast North Carolina as different–especially where I now live and teach, in San Francisco. I think the state is more representative than the country as a whole than many would expect. Sure, there’s a strong conservative Christian presence, but there’s also a strong liberal presence. The fears that North Carolina adults had (and have) about young people’s sexuality resonate with the fears I hear across the country. Even as we move away from abstinence-only education policies, the sentiment that sex is always and already bad for young people continues to dominate our talk about sex education.

Hi, Jessica!

And thanks to Heather for hosting this chat!

I think you are right about progressives not being able to come together and create a cohesive argument about why comprehensive sex ed is important for kids, teens and adults.

How can progressive people come together and create a galvanized stand for the necessity of comprehensive sex ed?

And that sentiment also has a thread through what kateholum just asked: how (or perhaps why) is it that sex ed curricula or current approaches are most frequently framing what is “healthy?” How does that idea that sex is either a negative or a lack-of-negatives — rather than possible positives as well — impact both sex ed and the limitations of ANY sex ed program?

The comprehensive and abstinence-only curricula shared a lot. Both teachers emphasized that young people should not be having sex, both made little to no mention of gay or lesbian sexuality or bisexuality. In addition, both formally reduced sexuality to a series of easily digestible facts and figures–vocabulary terms, anatomical images, adages and slogans. In the public schools, no matter what the formal curriculum, teachers were reluctant to take on students’ actual experiences of their own and others’ sexuality.

It’s easy for that to sound like a blaming of the teachers, but it’s important to recognize the constraints these teachers are working in. Their classrooms are social and political minefields, and they have little support for their work.

I am a retired educator with a major in Health and Physical Education. I taught high school sex ed from 1966 to 1886. During that time we progressed to coed classes. We also(in New Jersey)moved to age appropriate sex ed starting in kindergarten. Part of our problem was the quality of some of the teachers involved. As a rule the male PE teachers were poorly equiped to teach anything. I did spend some time supervising the elementary program. As a realist I was sad to see the advent of abstinence only. It would have been my hope that things would have continued to go forward as they did in the 60’s and 70’s. Some of my fondest teaching memories relate to some of my experiences with various sex ed classes.

Jessica,
Why do you think the conservatives seem so intent on denying reality and history with their adamant insistence on teaching abstinence only?

Do they think that by continuing to say that something shouldn’t be done, they can magically make sure that it wouldn’t be done?

My impression too, is that a lot of teachers — and a lot of healthcare providers on this subject as well — are validly nervous about “crossing the line” when it comes to discussing sex with young people, particularly when discussing it subjectively or around the context of pleasure or positive gain, not just bioligy and reproduction and possible risk or loss.

Thanks, Kate. Teaching was most successful when they and their students *took pleasure* in the act of learning and knowing about sex. For example, when teachers laughed with their students, weren’t embarrassed by the talk of bodies, answered questions frankly, etc. The key really is to allow sex education to itself be pleasurable–thus anticipating a life in which talk about sexuality and sexual experiences are pleasurable.

One of the most inspirational things I’ve ever read came from Audre Lorde. She points out that once we learn how to experience pleasure, we can recognize when we’re being denied pleasure. We can thus learn to fight back and claim what is our due.

Hi, Desiree. One early step is for us to unpack this idea of “comprehensive sex ed.” As I noticed in my observations of the schools, calling it comprehensive doesn’t mean it’s not going to contain sexist messages. Same goes for racist and classist messages. We need to be really clear about what we want from sex education. And then we need to commit resources to support the teachers and students doing this work. Teachers need training, supportive communities, funding, time in the school curriculum, . . . we need to insist that schools have a role to play in promoting sexual well-being and that teachers and students should be equipped to do this important work.

I just want to add that in the last year or so, I’ve had a look at some comprehensive sex curricula for classrooms, and was honestly surprised at how — in many ways — it wasn’t that different from abstinence-only curricula. Obviously, the comprehensive curricula varied in that the information was medically accurate, but the message does still seem to be the same: that saying no always beats saying yes, and there does seem to be, in all these curricula a real lack of discussing pleasure. I know all of that really was surprising for me, and that a lot of people seem to think there is a HUGE difference between the types of curricula in that regard, when I’m not so sure there is.

Per your last response to dcvaldez, Jessica, maybe we could talk some about issues of race, gender and class in all these curricula? What are some of the common threads you keep seeing that you brought up in Risky Lessons, things like the way bodies are presented, how male and female sexuality is framed, heterosexism, etc.?

Yes, adult teachers are scared of hurting young people by speaking about sex. But don’t teachers in fact need to do so? How else do we–young people or old–practice speaking safely and appropriately about sex? This opens a window.

Pade, I always love hearing that people enjoyed their work as sex educators. So many of the teachers I observed and met seemed to find it difficult to claim that they loved this part of their work. I gave a talk just the other day to teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District, and one of the men teachers said to me afterward that he was nervous about saying that he loved teaching sex ed. He was afraid he’d be deemed a pervert. This needs to change: we need to strive for a world in which teachers, students–all of us, really–can talk freely about sexuality.

I agree with you, kate, but I think some of the concern isn’t merely hurting young people so much as concern about losing one’s job, being framed as being sexually inappropriate, etc. In other words, we live in a culture where younger people and older people talking about sexuality is pretty tenuous, at best.

I do agree teachers need to do so, but I think this may be one of those areas where the current limitations are bigger than curriculum.

dakine01, with abstinence-only education, conservatives are responding to the reality they see around them. They recognize the power of education to remake the world, and, with abstinence-only messages, they are resisting a move toward secularism and liberalism that they consider bad for the family, individual, and society.

Jessica, perhaps this is a simplistic question, and hopefully won’t launch us off track, but do you feel like school is a good place for sex ed? Do you think that some of the barriers we have been discussing to really great sex ed in school can be removed or outgrown?

Jessica, is your point, however, that even if the two curricula do appear to be strikingly different on paper, they become very similar when they make it to the classroom because of the context in which they are being taught? Teachers, no matter how well meaning, are not necessarily well-prepared or even comfortable with the notion of talking to their students as sexual beings?

Thanks, Heather. I’m glad for a chance to talk about this. I am interested in Risky Lessons in the ways that what seem like “natural” and inevitable lessons about sexuality are filled with damaging messages about race, gender, sexuality, and more.

For example, images of bodies routinely depict pink-skinned, modestly positioned, and able-bodied bodies. Sex organs become “reproductive organs.” Male and female bodies are depicted as opposites, coming together only for heterosexual, procreative intercourse. All sorts of racial, gender, and sexual differences are muted. Worst of all, this muting happens in the context of “facts” and science.”

There are so many parts to education. Teaching sex ed was always a learning experience on my side as well as that of my students. Lots of teachers are so insecure that they are unable to participate in the learning experience. Teaching is much more fun as a shared venture. I learned every day from my students – as much when I taught elementary grades as when at the high school.

I agree with you.

The word “comprehensive” has so much authority attached to it and could lead one to think that the messages being conveyed through “comprehensive sex education” are taking into account race, class, and many other aspects of identity.

What would be a better way to describe the sex education curriculum that are not abstinence only?

Yes, abfdc, that’s part of the point. The curricula may be officially different, according to what’s on paper. But teachers aren’t prepared or comfortable to stray from the dominant message that young people should not be engaged in sexual behaviors.

The other important part of this is that advocates concerned with sex education need to turn our attention beyond policy decisions. Those decisions are important: they determine funding streams, help to shape the zeitgeist. But they don’t determine what teachers do inside the classroom. If we think we won because a school district is officially teaching comprehensive, we may be missing some important and troubling lessons inside the classroom.

I was so glad to see you talk about how often the sexual winds up having to be solely or primarily about the reproductive, an approach which not only leaves GLBT youth out in the cold, but which also so often frames sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, as being always about reproduction, rather than pleasure.

What do you feel like the level of awareness of these inequities is among teachers, policy-makers, curricula authors and students? Who is noticing these disparities and who isn’t? Who cares about them?

The awareness is scattered, and I think it’s tied to people’s own experiences of sex education and not as much to their place in the bureaucracy.

For example, I gave a talk in Kentucky a couple years ago and explored the issue of pink-skinned anatomical images. For the most part, the white teachers and students seemed floored to realize that, yes, these images were overwhelmingly white. The Black students, nodded knowingly.

In North Carolina, some teachers and administrators seemed to want to resist the normative lessons of sex education. The problem was finding the traction to make that resistance successful.

The “social support” for teachers and their work is critical.

Once back in the mid-1990s as the local high school (semi-suburban KC MO, racially and economically mixed) was preparing to put a bond issue on the ballot, they conducted a bunch of focus group interviews to see how the HS was seen in the community and to figure out how best to try to “sell” their bond issue proposal. One meeting was for a group of clergy, and I was asked to take part.

There were lots of ordinary questions given to all the different focus groups about things like school finances, athletics, teacher training and teacher pay. At the end, the facilitator opened it up: “Is there anything else that you’d like to say to the school or the school board that we haven’t discussed?”

One of the others said, “Well, there was talk last fall in the papers about the school nurse providing condoms, or referrals for birth control pills, or some such stuff. I don’t think the schools ought to be in the sex education business. Leave that to the churches and the parents.” There were glances exchanged and nods around the table, as others gave their assent. Then there was me.

Sorry, but I disagree. I wish the schools were doing *more* sex education, not less. Not every kid has a good family life at home. Not every kid has a good church to which they belong. But every kid has a place at school.

Of particular concern to me are gay and lesbian kids. Studies show that they are much more likely to attempt suicide than their straight classmates — not because of the fact that they are gay, but because they think they have nowhere to go with their questions, because of what they fear the reaction will be from the society.

I don’t like doing funerals for people who commit suicide, and if having the schools do more and better sex education can stop even one of those kids from killing themselves, I’m all for it.

We as the church have enough trouble being the church, and schools have enough to do being schools. We don’t need the schools to be turned into semi-churches.

(There’s a lot of other good reasons for having quality sex education, but this was one way I hoped would get through to some of the other clergy in the room.)

There was a stunned silence, and then the facilitator (perhaps unnerved by the unexpectedly blunt response I gave) thanked us for participating and called the session to a close.

I went back to my office, and about an hour later my phone started ringing. Of the ten clergy in that meeting, three of them called me to say “I’m glad you said that — I should have spoken up, too.”

On the note of who is noticing, did you feel like in the schools where a particular disparity should have been more obvious due to the population — the school where more students were of color, for instance, or where more were poor — that it was or was not obvious? Was it better addressed in a school where it was, to the particular students at hand, a larger issue?

Yes, Pade! The opportunity to learn *from* students is one of the greatest missed opportunities in sex education. Hierarchical and adultist models of teaching and learning so often get in the way.

Peterr, you just became my hero. :)

Can we take about that, too? The disparities based on age and nothing else? I know that’s an issue I face even in helping teens make sense of so much sexual information in the world being very clearly geared to older adults whose sex lives simply are different than young adult sex lives are. And I know that it’s something I feel like, as a sex educator, I have to try and always keep in the forefront of my mind, but it’s still easy to fall into ageism without being conscious of it, like any other kind of privilege.

So really, the problem with sex-education, in ALL its facets, is not a ‘problem’, in terms of the ‘kids’, but rather the attitude of supposed adults in this society.

In all honesty, does not the problem reside in America’s essentially warped view of sex, first as a commodity (think Mad. Ave.) and secondly as something inherently ‘bad’, that must be repressed and, ofren, denied as healthy, normal human behavior?

How may we reasonably expect children to have a healthy grasp of sex when their society refuses to acknowledge reality.

Or is that ‘Murkah’s ‘Christianity’, mangled with the Puritan ‘ethic’ and right wing propaganda, showing?

The conscious and progressive attention to social inequalities was greatest in the progressive Quaker school. There, students talked about gender differences, acknowledged gay and lesbian sexuality, and fostered a more equitable learning environment.

Notice that I’ve left out race and class in that list. Even the most progressive school didn’t talk about race and poverty as part of people’s experiences of sexuality. I’m not sure that language is freely available to us in the United States, so that silence reflects a broader social condition.

…and that brings up something else I was going to ask you about. :)

Sexuality and sex are, already, profoundly loaded topics. But so are race, class, gender, orientation, lookism. Do you feel like the loaded-ness of sex ed all by itself makes it tougher to bring up those other loaded issues or that since we’re already talking about something so loaded (and this has been more of my experience as an educator) it might, rather, be easier?

Late to the discussion, but delighted to see this topic discussed.

I studied human sexuality at SFSU in the 1990’s, and boy oh boy do I agree with the idea that sex education should help kids “recognize and contend with their sexual desires”. Thank goodness I had the good fortune to attend a university with such an important subject taken seriously!

Now to read the comments and catch up!

Jessica, did you have any opportunities to view other classes at the three schools you studied? This question kept nagging at me as I read, especially when you spoke of gender interactions.

Were you able to see differences between the interactions between boys and girls in (say) math or English classes, and compare them with what you saw in the sex education classes? When I think of the stories of the boys disrespecting the (female) rape crisis center counselor guests, it made me wonder how they dealt with other female authorities at the school.

Yes, adultism (or ageism) insistently shapes sex education. So much of our commitment to sex education rests on an anxiety about young people’s sexuality. At its most basic this anxiety comes out as a desire to teach them what they need to know before they “become sexually active” but not to “make them” sexually active by teaching them about something they don’t already know about. It takes more subtle forms as well, as adults quietly dismiss young people’s emotions as immature, for example, or grow uncomfortable when we hear that they’re sexually active and enjoying it.

Somehow, we need to acknowledge that anxiety AND remove it from the center of our instructional efforts. Adults need to let go of the idea that we know better simply because we’re older. Rather than assert that we can be sexually safe only as we get older, we should talk frankly about the conditions that promote sexual safety. Some of those conditions–privacy, agency, etc.–come more easily as we become adults, but they’re certainly not guaranteed for adults!

I feel like sometimes one reason this happens so often is that a lot of adults tend very much to want to forget our own adolescence because it was so often so painful or confusing. Too, I see a lot of adults projecting their own foibles unto teens: in other words, if they were unable to be responsible, to make sound choices or to have a sexuality which was beneficial, then so must it be for young people now.

I’m not sure, Heather, whether it’s easier or more difficult. I think it’s inevitable, though. When we’re NOT talking about looks, race, class, and the like, we’re telling students that, according to us, these things are not part of sexuality. And they aren’t going to buy that message. It undermines our credibility as allies and teachers.

As a teacher, I’d ask students to help me understand how race, class, looks, etc. are part of sexuality. I’d expect to hear about, for example, interracial dating, the costs of being popular, the challenge of not meeting beauty standards. These “other” issues are never far from sexuality. It’s hardly a stretch.

Heather;

Whom does it benefit that these ‘loaded’ topics have such ‘power’?

Is that not the sort of question which our times demand serious consideration of?

I do suspect that issues of ‘power’ and ‘control’ are the ‘reason’ such perfidious unreason exists and persists …

You could cast much of that unease about past adolescence into the present tense as well, as many adults *still* have difficulties around sexuality, body image, gender roles and expectations, societal pressure, etc.

Thanks, Peterr. I didn’t observe other classes at the schools, but I did got to lunch, attend school dances and other events (pep rallies, school plays), and hang out during recess. The interactions with women teachers in those moments weren’t strikingly different. I think that the interactional dynamics were heightened in sex ed: if a woman teacher was challenged in other settings, she was even more likely to be so in sex ed. And, when the subject was sex and bodies, female teachers were even more prone to be harassed by their students–boys, mostly, but also girls.

By all means I think it’s a massively essential question. And I think it’s also really obvious who it benefits: it benefits those with the most privilege.

But at the same time, even when you are without privilege, voicing that can be really difficult even just because it is emotional, it is painful, it is infuriating. And because those discussions can often get easily volatile, particularly when they’re had in a mixed group where some have privilege and others do not. I think having these kinds of discussions requires a space made safe for them, but I think that’s certainly doable.

Absolutely, Peterr.

Yes, perhaps we could all use a bit of truly comprehensive sex ed.

… and that seems to me like such a teaching moment! Time to ask the students WHY they are behaving the way they are, and what underlying inequities create or perpetuate that dynamic.

Yes, Heather and Peterr. Adults scapegoat youth, and sex education is only one means for doing so. Too often, adults insist that young people work out problems that we’ve created.

Absolutely! So many of my observations included these teaching moments just slipping by!

Thank you for replying, Heather.

“doable” AND most-necessary.

I want to bring up a big topic in the book that I think dovetails nicely with all of the discussion we’re having, which is what you frame as both the risks and the value in talking about young people having both a sexuality and sexual rights, particularly in response to how that is viewed not by young people themselves, but by adults. Obviously, some adult concern comes from simple care for young people, but I think this is another area where we see adult sexuality issues projected unto youth.

Back to this question from Heather about school as a place to teach sex ed (or not) . . .

I applaud efforts to teach sex education outside of the schools in churches, afterschool programs, community centers, online, through popular media, in families, . . . you get my point.

I also think it’s absolutely crucial that progressives not give up on schools. Public schools are one of the only places in which young people come together with peers from other social groups and communities and work with adults outside of their families. They do this with support (albeit often limited) from multiple levels of government. Thus, sex education is one moment in governments and communities providing for and working toward a broader public good. I don’t want to give up on that.

I love your last paragraph there: I agree with you. I think we also have a lot to gain — all of us, but particularly young people — for making their sex ed as community-oriented as possible; as pertinent to THEIR community social dynamics as we can. And obviously, school is really the living body of all of that as well as a place where everyone involved can be addresses about those dynamics. (That was a bit bungled per my words, but I think it’s clear enough.)

Jessica, Heather, can you put this discussion into perspective with the rest of the world – how is sex ed taught in western and eastern societies??

One of the concerns that dominates conversations about sex education is whether young people are or should be “sexually active.” I have to admit: I’m not sure what that term really means. To my mind, young people have no choice but to be sexually active. Their bodies are changing; they confront media messages that eroticize youth. They have crushes and/or are the object of crushes. They navigate images of sexuality as pleasurable or coercive, and sometimes both. Even if they choose not engage in sexual behaviors with another person, they live in a sexual world that calls on them to actively respond.

I’d like sex education to honor that sexual activity–to recognize all that young people are engaged in and support them in their efforts to craft a sexual life that respects others and brings them pleasure.

Bev, it really depends on the where, because IME, it tends to vary. But for the most part, sex ed just…well, isn’t in most eastern nations. For instance, over the least year in India, many people have been trying to get sex education into schools — even just books in libraries — and it’s been a battle that makes the one we have here about it look like a tea party. There were book burnings during the last year over this in India.

Yes, but I really meant on a broader level – in every teaching experience – in all areas. Perhaps on an even wider level. We all have so much to learn from each other and we are so often closed to the experience.

I’d like sex education to honor that sexual activity–to recognize all that young people are engaged in and support them in their efforts to craft a sexual life that respects others and brings them pleasure.

It would also be beneficial (IMNSVHO) for the sex ed classes to dispell all the myths and lies:
You can’t get pregnant if you’re nursing
The rhythm method works
(fill-in-the-blank) isn’t really sex.
etc, etc, etc.

LOVE, love, love what you just said here.

I had a young women this year send in the question, “If you’re sexually active…can you deactivate yourself?” :)

And of course, the answer is both yes and no. We can choose to enact our sexuality with others or not, but we can’t really choose to capital-B be sexual or not: sexuality in many ways just isn’t something we can easily compartmentalize or only take out of the box if and when we’re having sex.

young people having both a sexuality and sexual rights

Isn’t that one of the most important ideas for any sex educator to keep in mind while teaching! Kids come into the classroom with their own unique sexuality–whether they have acted on it or not–and they have the right to control their own bodies so long as they do not hurt themselves or others. IMO that gets really lost in all the dry talk of anatomy and STD’s.

Dakine, I get that “real” sex question a lot, and my usual response tends to be that if it feels like sex, if you did it because you felt sexual and wanted to express those feelings, it was really sex. And if it didn’t feel like “real” sex, either the defintion needs adjustment, or it wasn’t sex or it just wasn’t particularly good sex. :)

You are absolutely correct concerning the abject failure of ‘progressives’ to set up schools, having been involved in two such efforts, I can state that it was my fellow, ostensibly ‘progressive’ ‘founders’ who had not the vision nor courage to continue.

In one of the ‘attempts’, the Buffet family was showing significant ‘interest’ when other, narrow, parochial ‘interests’ came to the fore and simply sabotaged the collective (and lengthy) efforts of the rest of us.

It was a most frustrating and depressing experience.

Had it gone forward, there is no doubt in my mind, that it would have been of great benefit and could well have served as ‘example’.

It is often the timidity and excessively obsequious behaviors of progressives which defeats progressives and keeps their ideas from reaching a broader audience.

;~(

One of the international comparisons that comes up most often is between the US and Scandinavian countries. In North Caorlina, the abstiennce-only adovcates held up these countries as cautionary tales: adopt comrehensive instruction, and everything will fall apart. The liberals often viewed the Scandinavian countries as the ideal. For sure, their policies are more progressive than those we’ve had in the era of abstinence-only education.

However, some of my colleagues have done interesting work on this. Lisa Vallin, a recent MA from SFSU, surveyed Swedish and US young adults about their experiences of sex education. Previous research would lead us to believe that the Swedish youth were getting strong comprehensive instruction. Vallin found that they weren’t getting as quality an education as one might expect. Amy Schalet, a faculty member at UMass, studied parents’ attitudes toward their kids’ sexuality in the Netherlands and the US. She found profoundly different fundamental beliefs about the dangers of sexuality, with the Dutch parents embracing their children’s sexuality much as I described above when I explored what it means to be sexually active.

I think it is one of the most important ideas yellowsnapdragon, to be sure. That’s certainly how I feel about it.

But I also think it’s one that gets very lost in much sex ed curricula, lost in all the argument about sex ed, and lost if we try and only talk about sex in the context of risk management. That void is something that’s so central to what Jessica has written about with this book, and it’s great to see (and I say that particularly as someone who has had to argue for that necessity for a decade now: you’d be amazed at how many people dismiss how central that is).

Yes, Pade. My focus is on sex education, but I’d love to see this sort of pedagogy throughout the school.

And how many teenagers don’t masturbate. Isn’t that being sexually active. Isn’t fantasizing sexual activity?

The fact is that kids are sexually active. The point is to help kids be sexually active in a way that respects themselves and others.

Yes, dakine01. If we met students where they are, we’d have to confront the myths and lies they’re dealing with. We’d probably have to deal with some of our own as well!

Jessica, in the book you talk about both teachers supporting and subverting the curricula: what were some good examples you were seeing of subversion that seemed to benefit the students the most? Were those about changing or supplementing the curriculum itself, or just about bringing a tone to them that wasn’t there?

(Perhaps some of what I am asking is what you see as the best equation for good sex ed in the schools: how much of it is really about curricula, and how much just about good teachers who want to provide good education?)

Over the last 15 years or so, discussions of child abuse have become more public and are often brought into the schools as well. This adds to the sex education conversations questions like “what do/should we say about child abuse, to help them feel safer?”

This also drives discussions of sex education into classes younger than 6th grade. To some, this is a horror story; to others it is an opportunity for a more holistic view of sexuality. You don’t talk about it in the same way with six year olds as you do with sixteen year olds, of course. But in talking about it every year, it removes the “ooohhhh — it’s time for The Class” factor.

I see your point, but every time you dispell one myth or lie, another pops up, sorta like the whack-a-mole arcade game. I hope education helps us learn to be critical in general, so we don’t accept everything we are handed as inevitable.

Unfortunately though, this brings us back to the conservative myth that teaching anything but abstinence places everyone on the road to the collapse of western civilization as we know it.

I often find myself in a room with others committed to a progressive–and liberatory–model of sex education. So often we lose our sense of vision in favor of a different task: pushing back against the conservatism. We forget to continue articulating what we want, and not just what we don’t want.

And this, for the record, would be the topic of the fear-driven McCain ads about Obama wanting “sex ed for kindergartners.”

(Or why, as an ex-kindergarten teacher, after I left that field to do sex ed, I got asked by some interviewers asking about my sex ed work if I was really an appropriate teacher for young children before, presumably because since I now did sex ed, I must have sat chatting up 5-year-olds about oral sex while teaching.)

Absolutely, yellowsnapdragon. The ways in which young people–and adults–are sexually active are innumerable. Perhaps that could be one of sex ed’s first lessons.

Perhaps once again schools should be charged with teaching ‘logic’, what we called philosophy 101, in my day.

You know, teaching the next generation about the ability to distinguish false argument (”You’re either with us or against us!”; otherwise known as the “big stick form of argument”) when it is being used to frighten people into behaving certain ways …

Indeedy so, Jessica, indeedy so.

Heh. There’s an awful lot of seedy sexual stuff in the history of Western Civilization. If civilization were going to end because of sex, it already would have.

The strongest subversion seemed to come from teachers either (1) finding a way around the formal requirements or (2) bringing themselves into the classroom in an innovative way.

(1) Teachers have long done things like create an anonymous question box that allows students to raise issues that might be out of the bounds of the formal curriculum. The teacher feels supported in doing this because the need comes from the students.

(2) One of the best moments I witnessed came when a teacher taught students to do breast and testicular self-exams using the backs of their hands as examples. She explained how you should use the pads of your fingers, feel for veins, hot spots where there’s an infection, etc. The students were riveted. This was entirely outside the formal curriculum, and I couldn’t believe that the students weren’t falling out of their chairs at the thought of touching their breasts and testicles. But they weren’t. I think they were responding to the authority and comfort their teacher brought to the lesson.

I’ve had that same experience, Jessica. It’s actually pretty amazing to me that at this point in time, there are still so few models for this.

For instance, last year I figured it was time to simply write up what, exactly, feminist sex education was, and in doing a little research to see how others had done that, I pretty much came up with a whole lot of nothing.

The anonymous question box is always a hit. :)

I remember that self-exam story from your book. It seemed really fantastic.

Was your impression in those schools like the teachers were given a good level of latitude to be creative in ways like that?

Geez, yellowsnapdragon, you need only go back to our own Colonial and early Republic periods to find behaviors which would shock many uptight(?)American folk today.

;~D

…and on that note, what IS your general vision of liberatory sexuality education? What’s your sex ed utopia look like?

Thanks for bringing that up, Heather. I’ve been fascinated by this challenge to Obama from McCain. The mere thought of talking about sexuality with kindergartners threatens to make Obama vulnerable. In these ads, sex ed becomes akin to act of perversion, even more so as the students are younger.

My seven year old loves Animal Planet television, and in particular Meerkat Manor. When he was four and five he used to watch it while I did the cooking, and when Mrs Peterr arrived home and we sat down to eat, he would tell her all about it.

One night she got home, we sat down at the table, and without preamble he asked “did you and daddy mate before I was born?” Mrs Peterr looked at me strangely, and I said “he was watching Meerkat Manor.” “Ah,” she said to me, “now I see.” Turning to him, she answered “Yes, we did.”

Not exactly the way I expected this subject to come up.

I have great respect for good kindergarten teachers.

I think that teachers have latitude because of the privacy they gain when the classroom door shuts. Teachers have a sense of what material will “cross the line” in their classroom, and they are careful not to cross that line. Abstinence-only policies and debates have, for many educators, made that line seem a little closer; similarly, the risks in crossing it may seem greater. But most teachers still try to do what they think is best for their students and, in doing so, get as close to that line as they can.

Absolutely.

But I thought that is also illustrated, really well, how limited the general framework of what sex and sexuality are to the general population. In other words, how easy it is to hoodwink people into immediately leaping to the idea that having sex was being discussed rather than — as was the case in those programs being brought up — teaching very young children about their bodily autonomy and right to it, about personal safety and the boundaries they should expect others to respect, about how to disclose abuse if it happens. All of those things are so obviously — to me — parts of sexuality, integral parts — and yet, so clearly not obvious to many others given the conservative response to those ads.

It’s a lovely story, Peterr. Made me laugh and smile in the midst of typing furiously!

Ha! That’s just brilliant. :)

And such a great example of age-appropriate context and how people of any age have the ability to frame things for themselves and in a way that suits their own place in development.

What a great story. And what a great answer. Simple and to the point.

Do you feel like, then, Jessica, that perhaps there is a level of unrealistic hysteria — or heck, maybe it’s even just an easy out for teachers who aren’t comfortable talking about sex or who don’t really want to be doing sex ed — about adult/youth subjective conversation about sex? In other words, is it less dangerous than some people seem to think or say it is?

Well-done, all around, Peterr!

;~D

Locking sex ed into one course at one age level is such a limiting thing.

Yes, good points about what we actually mean when we discuss sex ed with kindergartners.

One problem lies in the insistence on children’s innocence. Young children are supposed to be free of sexual knowledge, unsullied by anything sexual. Thus, even to offer them information that might equip them to care for themselves and even protect themselves from harm threatens to compromise that innocence. The commitment to keeping children innocent threatens to leave them more vulnerable to harm. And that problem extends from sex ed for kindergartners right on up through high school.

I absolutely agree, Peterr. Interestingly, I think that greater awareness of seniors and sex may be one thing that can foster a change in idea about that: it makes it tougher for people to just class all things sex as adult or not-adult. It is one way people have had to start looking at phases of life and ways sex can differ in all of them.

One thing I’ve noticed, in serving a variety of parishes, is that rural communities sometimes are better at dealing with sex and sex ed, because farm kids have more contact with animals and their lives, including even being present at the delivery of calves, piglets, etc. Sex is more of a “regular” part of their world, and not something reserved for That Class in sixth grade.

In some ways I am suggesting something “dangerous.” Talking with young people about sex and sexuality, stepping out of adultist hierarchies, insisting on cooperative and liberatory education across the schools, calling on sex ed to deal with racial and sexual difference . . . all of these things are part of a remaking of how we understand sexuality and our places in the world. If my vision were realized, things would look quite different.

But the dangers aren’t what are so often identified. It’s not the danger of corruption and loss. It’s the risk we run in remaking the world and, consequently, finding that many of us have to give up some of our privileges.

Again, I’m in total agreement with you (but we knew that would be the case for pretty much all of this from the start.:))

I feel like that, though, kind of brings us full circle back to talking about sex as pretty much always either negative or benign, never positive. If innocence is a good thing, a virtue — and it’s pretty much put that way by nearly everyone — and sex, at any age, means loss of innocence, it makes it pretty difficult to frame sex as ever really being positive, don’t you think? It pits those two things as enemies, because it makes them mutually exclusive.

(I was a Blake scholar in college, and oddly enough, Blake does NOT make them so. In fact, in his framework, you have innocence, then experience, then if you really get enlightened, you have innocence illuminated and made more meaningful by experience.)

My aunt, who raised her children in a rural area, once told me the same thing. Many of her conversations happened in the course of a routine day.

“It’s the risk we run in remaking the world and, consequently, finding that many of us have to give up some of our privileges.”

I think I may need to get this tattooed on my forehead. Brilliant, and so, so perfect.

I’ve never even thought of this angle, even though it seems so obvious now!

Since we’re getting towards the end of our time, I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about what you really want to talk about Jessica: are there stones left unturned for you here you want to address and discuss?

“Young children are supposed to be free of sexual knowledge ..”

Although, of course, they have been subjected to the perverse sexual imagery of Mad. Ave, and as I have daughters, I can say without fear of being challenged, that very young girls are encouraged by images everywhere to regard themselves as commodities, and by the time they have reached puberty, it is quite clear to them precisely what form of ‘commodity’ they may take themselves for.

Our culture is rather two-faced when it comes to sex.

Sex may be used to sell literally anything, even ourselves and our children.

I breed and dogs and once took a nursing litter at a young age with me to my elementary school and we brought all the classes one at a time to watch them. Instant visual aid. It was a great hit.

…and young people voice an awareness of this a LOT, in my experience. While adults may not see that mixed message so clarly, my impression is that a whole lot of young people do, even if they’re not sure how to parse or manage it.

I’d like to take innocence out of the equation. If we’re all sexually active, in some way, we’re never innocent. And that seems OK to me.

One other thing on “positive”: Sometimes the move to talk about sexuality as positive–to be “sex positive,” some would say–runs its own risks. It can become an insistence that sexuality *is* a positive force in one’s life. I’d like sex ed to examine the *conditions* that allow for positive and pleasurable sexual lives. We need also to recognize the negative and consider how we recover from the negative experiences. We need also to think about how not to contribute to others’ negative experiences.

Oh my, I don’t think I’ve ever inspired a tattoo before. Sleep on it, OK?!

My observations certainly confirm what you are saying, Peterr.

Perhaps as we become further removed from nature our own natures may be more easily ’shaped’ in ways that benefit the ‘priviliged’ (and ‘perverted’)?

I agree that “sex-positive” is a tricky term, and that we err if we frame sexuality as any one monolithic thing, be it negative OR positive.

Stones unturned . . .

Not many! This has been a great conversation. Thanks to everyone who posted and listened in. One question I would like to raise for others: what can those of us not in the classroom do to support more liberatory sex education? How can we act on the issues and insight raised here today? Perhaps we’ll have time for answers, or maybe it’s something to consider after we close.

Congratulations on the book Jessica. I have just caught up reading the comments here! Nearly 10 years after your fieldwork, I found myself in a school similar to the Southern county school – trying to teach 7th grade math. Putting all my fascinating anecdotes aside, I have to say that a “sex ed curriculum” is a pretty funny notion. There is no containing this education to health class! Even when I didn’t want to engage with students about sexuality, my students found ways to engage me. They were determined experimenters and knowledge-seekers. I wished I was more prepared, and I wished I had more time (like the Fox school teacher) to really help these kids with the socialization that they craved.

Just imagine a society where we could grow up with a healthy attitude to sex.

My classroom observations and interviews with students suggest that they *do* see this mixed message re: sexuality. It fosters a lot of distrust for adults.

Excellent point, barbsmalley! Yes, sex education is happening everywhere and all the time. How wonderful it would be to train and support math teachers to do the work we’re describing here.

Honestly, for myself — and I do sex ed primarily online, but I am also running a clinic-based outreach program in Washington state, so I get out to in-person groups as well — you bringing up the issues you have is just ace. These are things that, when we are paying attention to our students, I really think are tough to miss as educators, but it is frustrating how often these issues get lost when everyone is still stuck in the sex-ed-or-not argument.

I also really think when adults talk about their OWN sex ed – where they got it, what they got, what they didn’t, what they really wanted then, what they still want now — it’s so helpful.

I’d like sex ed to examine the *conditions* that allow for positive and pleasurable sexual lives.

Bingo. This is what keeps healthy sex education from sliding into what the Fundies fear: “if you make it sound like fun, then they’ll just want to do it!”

Thanks, Jessica and Heather for visiting here, with us..

Please return if you’ve the time.

Excellent discussion.

And a most-important one as well.

DW

Of course, too, supporting sex educators, period, is a biggie. I think so often we’re kind of seen as creepy interlopers, when, really, any of us who choose to do this for our living do tend to want to do it for all the right reasons.

After all, it certainly isn’t sexually exciting to talk to teenagers about their sex lives: if anything, it tends to be a bit of a buzzkill. :P

As we come to the end of this great Book Salon,

Jessica, Thank you for stopping by the Lake today and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book.

Heather, Thank you again for Hosting this Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought the book yet, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

Thanks, Peterr. That’s an excellent point. perhaps we are equipped to articulate our vision of what liberatory sex ed is and what sort of sexual world we imagine.

The idea that kids have the right to control their own bodies is revolutionary. The idea that kids have the right to control their own bodies and experience sexual pleasure is downright scandalous. The idea that kids experiencing sexual pleasure is a positive thing, well, I don’t even know what to call that because it is so far out of the accepted terms of the discussion of sex education that we may as well be talking about little green men from Mars.

Thanks for having us! :)

Many thanks to you all for the questions and comments. Many thanks to Heather for such good hosting.

I enjoyed it!

Jessica Fields
jfields@sfsu.edu

“The idea that kids have the right to control their own bodies and experience sexual pleasure is downright scandalous. The idea that kids experiencing sexual pleasure is a positive thing, well, I don’t even know what to call that because it is so far out of the accepted terms of the discussion of sex education that we may as well be talking about little green men from Mars”

…or the hate mail boxes of folks like myself and Jessica, yellowsnpdragon. :)

But we’ve been getting there: we’ll get there.

Glad you came by!

(Peterr, if you see this, I’d love it if you dropped me an email. Some of my users have particular issues regarding sexuality and faith that having supportive pastors to consult with when I get a tricky one is so helpful.)

http://www.scarleteen.com/contact

Thank you Jessica and Heather for this terrific discussion. Please come back some time.

There is more than enough sex negative stuff floating around. I consider myself sex positive even though I’ve encountered sex in negative situations. Keeping positive keeps me healthy.

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