Community Experiences with the 1969 Attack on Sex Education

Abstract

What's going on here? The legislature of Southern state overwhelmningly votes to protect all school children below the ninth grade from any kind of sex education. A meeting of Midwestern parentteacher organization is turned into shouting match, and out on the highway new billboard reads, What my child should know, I will tell her. Oppose sex education in our schools. The board of education of Far Western state unanimously accepts as the basis of its family life education report that criticizes the United States Supreme Court, the United Nations, and mental health programs, and labels humanism a 20th century synonym for atheism. As most readers must know, what is going on here is particularly violent reaction against sex education that should give 1969 its own peculiar place in the histories of public education (Baker, 1969). To what extent was 1969's Great War over Sex Education in the Schools newspaper story, and to what extent was it an actual fact of life in the communities where The Family Coordinator readers live and work? To get some perspective, we asked the journal's newly formed Family Life Education