Doing Sex Education: Gender Politics and Schooling

Originally published in 1993. This book takes the reader inside the contested issue of sex education by examining how a sexuality curriculum is actually taught to a ninth-grade health class and how it impacts on both the teacher and students. Drawing on observations and interviews with teachers, students, and other school personnel to capture the complexity and tension of lived classroom culture, this volume illustrates the dynamic, complex, and sometimes contradictory processes by which traditional versions of appropriate sexual behaviour and gender relations are legitimated as well as contested. The book describes in detail the classroom knowledge that is produced by the interactions between gendered, raced and classed students and teacher, the planned curriculum, and the social organisation of the school and community. The book also tackles the broader issues of how sex education should be taught and even whether it should be taught at all.