When sex goes to school: Warring
views on sex--and sex education--since the sixties
Kristin Luker, 2006
W. W. Norton & Company
$25.95, 416 pp
ISBN 0-393-06089-6
Review by: Norman A. Constantine
Federal policy in the United States officially promotes
abstinence-only until marriage, while restricting information about effective
contraception and sexually transmitted disease prevention for sexually active
students. At the same time, public opinion surveys have consistently
demonstrated widespread support for comprehensive sex education. In When sex
goes to school, sociology professor Kristin Luker examines the sex
education debates in America. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the
perspectives held by a sample of 105 local activists across four American
communities, Luker probes the values and motivations of some of the most vocal
participants in these debates.
The book begins with a social and political history of sex
education in America. Starting with the invention of an early form of sex
education by the social hygienists during the first sexual revolution a hundred
years ago, we travel through the second and very different sexual revolution of
the sixties, and then on to the contemporary sex-education approaches that are
behind the highly politicized debates of today. Throughout this journey Luker
skillfully integrates historical fact and well-supported speculation with
relevant social and political theory.
Luker then dives into the current debates, beginning by
classifying her research participants into two opposing ideologies -- sexual
conservatives and sexual liberals. These labels, we are told, came largely from
participants’ own words during the interviews, and it seems, especially from
the sexual conservatives in the sample, who are fond of characterizing everyone
who disagrees with them as liberals, and unabashed about their own
self-labeling as conservatives. Recognizing that these two concepts are
somewhat fuzzy, several chapters are devoted to exemplifying each type and
exploring their correlates and etiologies.
Beyond Luker’s basic delineation that sexual conservatives
support abstinence-only until marriage sex education whereas sexual liberals
support comprehensive sex education, we learn that “For the conservatives, sex
outside of marriage is wrong because the Bible says it is.” (p 136). “The
liberals, however, think that the question of sex before and outside of
marriage comes down to facts” (p.137). Luker explains facts as being based in
relevant information and reasoning rather than faith, and subject to testing
and, when necessary, correction. (As I understand her, relevant facts might
include, for example, contraception success rates, or knowledge about the emotional
maturity of one’s partner.) In the terminology of ethics, Luker’s distinction
might be viewed as representing a conflict between deontological values
(protected, non-negotiable values based on rules concerning behaviors) and
consequentialist values (negotiable values focused on outcomes and subject to
value tradeoffs to achieve the best results).
In an extended discussion on these two proposed sexual
ideologies, the many exemplars and quotations of sexual conservatives that
Luker provides tend to coalesce quite coherently. This category might provide a
useful conceptualization appropriate to many or most of the small group of
Americans who vocally support abstinence-only until marriage approaches to sex
education. I think the opposite is true, however, about Luker’s presentation of
her sexual-liberal category. This group was portrayed with a broad brush -- not
only as supporting comprehensive sex education and accepting sex outside of
marriage, but as hedonistic (“if it feels good do it” p. 100), pluralistic,
near universal in their “support for homosexuality” (p. 112), apt to describe
their opponents as Christians, and beholden to dubious folk theories about
children’s perception and attention (p. 198). This unrestrained and
stereotypical description, together with the sexual-liberal label, does not do
justice to the ideological and educational heterogeneity found
across the substantial majority of Americans who pragmatically support
comprehensive sex education.
Luker’s fundamental oversight, I believe, is her neglect of
the sexual middle – just one sentence in the book was devoted to this group,
noting in passing that they were precluded from the study due to the study’s
designed sampling of activists. Perhaps the sexual conservatives that Luker interviewed
do view everyone else as liberals, and some of the community activists for
comprehensive sex education might indeed be hedonistic, pluralistic sexual
liberals. But the large majority of Americans who, on state and national public
opinion surveys, consistently choose comprehensive sex education (about 80%)
over abstinence-only approaches (about 12%) and contraception-only approaches
(about 5%), do not as a group fit Luker’s expansive descriptions of the sexual
liberals. Substantial majorities of all racial-ethnic groups, both genders, all
socioeconomic groups and educational levels, and all religious denominations
including evangelical Christians, support comprehensive sexuality education.
These supporters report a diversity of values on related issues, such as
traditional marriage, sex outside of marriage, abortion, homosexuality, gender
roles, and so on. What binds them together, conceptually at least, are their
pragmatic, public-health-oriented views on sexuality education. And in addition
to its many quieter members, this sexual middle does include advocates and
activists for comprehensive sex education – at the community, state, and
national levels. Thus I can’t help but wonder if an alternative framing of the
debates might be more useful – one that explicitly recognizes this majority
middle as an ethically unique force in support of comprehensive sex education,
pragmatic rather than deontological across a wide range of sexual values
spanning the spectrums from traditional to progressive, and from religious to
secular.
In a later part of the book, Luker argues that “American sex educators are sadly confused“ in venerating European approaches to sex education, especially in France. This argument is supported by noting that Sweden and France both have similar low rates of adolescent pregnancy, abortion, STD’s, etc., and claiming, however, that Sweden provides exemplary sex education while “official sex education in France is much closer to what American conservatives would favor, almost 180 degrees away from the comprehensive, frank, and open Swedish sex education.” (p.211). Having made a pilgrimage similar to Luker’s to study sex education in northern Europe, I came back with a fundamentally different view of sex education in France. I suppose Luker would consider me sadly confused, but I saw much to emulate in the French approach. For example, forty hours of sex education in grades 8 and 9 are mandated by the French government (in California, America’s most sexually pragmatic state, two hours are mandated), the Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial provides and supports comprehensive sex education to young people in and out of schools through a network of 60 regional centers around the country, a national youth-focused mass-media educational campaign on contraception and protection from STDs and AIDS reinforces school-based sex education, and free, non-prescription emergency contraception is provided by school nurses to any adolescent who requests it. Is this really “much closer to what American conservatives would favor”?
The book closes with several suggestions for change that
range from sensible (school boards should determine if parent speakers actually
have children enrolled in the district), to unrealistic (offer separate tracks
for both abstinence-only and comprehensive at the same school, and let the
students and their parents decide which track to follow). In fairness, there
are no simple solutions to this sometimes rancorous clash of protected versus
pragmatic values. Yet for starters, it would be helpful for America’s vast and
value-diverse sexual middle to assert its own pragmatic identity, rather than
allowing sexual conservatives and sociologists to define them as sexual
liberals. The importance of framing the issue in a
political debate is well-known, and the danger in allowing a small vocal
minority of deontologicaly-valued sexual conservatives to define their
opposition should be clear.
Norman A. Constantine, Center
for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, Public Health Institute, and
School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Acknowledgement: I thank the W.T. Grant Foundation for its
essential support of my work.