The History of Teaching and Talking about Sex in Schools

Abstract

It has never been easy to talk about sex in schools, much less to offer any formal curriculum. That difficulty has extended to historical research on the subject as well. However, a significant body of historical work on sexuality has been published in recent decades, including John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman's contemporary classic, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (1988, 1997). Groundbreaking works such as this have inspired new historical scholarship on sexuality in a range of social contexts, including schools. Chief among these are two recent books on the history of sex education in United States public schools, a previously underresearched area. These two works, in turn, provide important groundwork on which a rich variety of scholarship in the history of education may yet be written. The first of these volumes, Jeffrey Moran's Teaching Sex: The Shaping ofAdolescence in the 20th Century, chronicles the development of formal sex education programs in public schools from the progressive era through the present. Moran frames these programs as means by which adults have attempted to alter the sexual behavior of adolescents. He argues that there is little evidence these programs ultimately have achieved their stated ends. Instead, sex education battles have revealed much about the values that adults have wished to impart to youth.