Katherine Luker
Kristin Luker spent over twenty years exploring the ideas that people in ordinary communities have about sex and how entwined, if at all, the education system should be in teaching about such a controversial subject. Luker argues that parents are deeply divided over the topic of sex and that the division itself is more about life roles in marriage and family life than it is just about sex.
The purpose of sex education is to prevent the social ills of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy but what is at the center of the debate are personal value systems. Luker illustrates early on how sex education teaches more about values than sex, especially the values regarding gender roles and marriage and even more specifically the role of women in society. Public opinion is divided on societal mores of such roles and therefore can not come to an agreement on how sex should be taught to children/teenagers. Since the Progressive era on, standards have been taught under the guise of “sex education”. The social hygienists promoted a loving, tender sexual drive for middle to upper class women of the time to comfortably understand their sexual desire in the marriage realm only. The 1960’s promoted a different standard, though feminist in theme as well, and created a surge of women conducting their sex lives in the same vein as men. The standards had to be switched from teaching about sex within marriage to teaching general information in the hopes of clarifying the students’ own values so they would “act prudently” (86). Though standards were still being taught, they were taught with a step in the direction of acknowledging sex outside of marriage.
A concept Liker spends a significant amount of time explaining is the line between what she labels the conservative viewpoint versus the liberal viewpoint. The labels, though self-imposed by the parents, are fuzzy categories that neither side of the line could fully define but yet could place...
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