When Sex Goes to School by Kristin Luker

In 1981, two Republican Senators, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.), introduced the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA). As groups like Focus on the Family and Conservative Women for American coalesced around pro-family policies in the late 70's, sexual ed proved a proxy issue for much of what they mourned in contemporary America: the decline of the family, the coarsening of the culture, the glorification of sexuality. 'Yet opposition to sex education,' writes Luker, 'once the purview of what was called the 'radical right' moved in just a little over a decade to the center of the Republican Party.'

A few groups were opposed, but the issue of whether Sally should spend class time fitting condoms over fruit just wasn't the stuff political platforms were built on. It's a fascinating look at big government conservatism ascendant.īetween the early '70s and '80s, Luker reminds us, teaching contraception was relatively uncontroversial.

She stays remarkably objective about the whole business, but the story that emerges is that of a liberal policy hijacked to serve conservative ends. Luker, a professor at the University if California, Berkley, has studied the evolution of sex ed for 20 years, following four American communities as the controversy developed. It wasn't always this way, as sociologist Kristin Luker explains in her new book, When Sex Goes to School, a study of America's tortured sex ed debate. Having the government teach coitus along with math and science has become so ingrained that the old conservative response to teaching sex in the classroom-don't-has dropped out of the conversation. Adolescent sex, apparently, indicates a policy failure, and public school parents have a grand total of two policy options: the comprehensive sex ed preferred by the left, or the abstinence-only version preferred by the right. That pregnancy rates were a function of a high school curriculum went unquestioned.

The board decided that Canton schools would adopt sex-ed curriculums that promote contraception. The school offered only abstinence-based sex ed courses, and Columnist Dan Savage summed up the prevailing liberal sentiment in four words: 'Good Work, American Taliban!'īut the 64 pregnancies were less interesting than the school's board's implicit acceptance of blame. Two weeks ago, Timken High School of Canton, Ohio made national headlines with the revelation that fully 13 percent of its female students were pregnant in 2005.

When Sex Goes to School by Kristin Luker