"It is difficult to imagine a juicier subject, or a more thoughtful, fluent, trustworthy guide for its exploration."—San Francisco Chronicle A chronicle of the two decades that noted sociologist Kristin Luker spent following parents in four America communities engaged in a passionate war of ideas and values, When Sex Goes to School explores a conflict with stakes that are deceptively simple and painfully personal. For these parents, the question of how their children should be taught about sex cuts far deeper than politics, religion, or even friendship. "The drama of this book comes from watching the exceptionally thoughtful Luker try to figure [sex education] out" (Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review). In doing so, Luker also traces the origins of sex education from the turn-of-the-century hygienist movement to the marriage-obsessed 1950s and the sexual and gender upheavals of the 1960s. Her unexpected conclusions make it impossible to look at the intersections of the private and the political in the same way.

This book engages contemporary debates about the notion of secularism outside of the field of education in order to consider how secularism shapes the formation of progressive sexuality education. Focusing on the US, Canada, Ireland, Aotearoa-New Zealand and Australia, this text considers the affinities, prejudices, and attachments of scholars who advocate secular worldviews in the context of sexuality education, and some of the consequences that ensue from these ways of seeing. This study identifies and interrogates how secularism infuses progressive sexuality education. It asks readers to consider their own investments in particular ways of thinking and researching in the field of sexuality education, and to think about how these investments have developed and how they shape existing discourses within the field of sexuality education. It hones in on how progressive sexuality education has come to develop in the way that it has, and how this relates to conceits of secularism. This book prompts a consideration of how "progressive" scholarship and practice might get in the way of meaningful conversations with students, teachers, and peers who think differently about the field of sexuality education.

As anyone who has read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales knows, Middle English literature is rife with sexually explicit language and situations. Less canonical works can be even more brazen in describing illicit acts of sexual activity and sexual violence. Such scenes and language were not, however, included exclusively for titillation. In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris argues instead for obscenity’s usefulness in sexual education. She investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman’s songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. She focuses in particular on understudied female-voiced lyrics and gendered debate poems, many of which have their origin in oral culture, and includes teaching-ready editions of fourteen largely unknown anonymous lyrics in women’s voices. Harris’s own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.

An exemplary team of professionals provides a comprehensive look at sex education, the heated debate over federal controls, current research and practice, programs, politics, legislation, and cultural and religious issues related to sex and sexuality education. In the groundbreaking Sexuality Education: Past, Present, and Future, the history, practices, and politics of sexuality education are explained. Respected educators, counselors, and therapists marshal both research and educated opinion to offer insights into exactly what is meant by "sex education," what the various approaches are, what "age appropriate" lessons are supported by most professionals, and the impact of government policies. Noting that the need for sexuality education has expanded to adults, from new parents to senior citizens, this unique work also takes readers into classrooms and makes them privy to conversations representing everyone from elementary school students to nursing home residents. These comments reveal the range of unanswered questions about sex—questions that are important for psychological, as well as physical health. In addition, the contributors explore ongoing issues in sexuality education, such as how to present "culturally competent" lessons that include consideration of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The experts also examine sexuality education in other countries, the challenges those countries face, and their victories over unplanned pregnancy and STDs in the global effort to preserve sexual health.

While arguments for and against teaching abstinence, the use of contraceptives, and sexual identity are becoming more and more polarized, most people agree that students must learn to navigate an increasingly sexual world. Sex Ed for Caring Schools presents a curriculum that goes beyond the typical health education most students receive today. As part of a critical pedagogy movement that connects education to social justice enterprises, this book and the corresponding online curriculum encourage students to talk, write, and think about the moral and relational issues underlying sex in society today. Addressing the real concerns of todays teens, this book includes lessons on pornography, prostitution, media objectification, religion, and stereotypes.

Offers essays demonstrating the critical relevance of Irigaray’s thought of sexual difference for addressing contemporary ethical and social issues. Engaging the World explores Luce Irigaray’s writings on sexual difference, deploying the resources of her work to rethink philosophical concepts and commitments and expose new possibilities of vitality in relationship to nature, others, and to one’s self. The contributors present a range of perspectives from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, literature, education, evolutionary theory, sound technology, science and technology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. They place Irigaray in conversation with thinkers as diverse as Charles Darwin, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gilles Deleuze, René Decartes, and Avital Ronell. While every essay challenges Irigaray’s thought in some way, each one also reveals the transformative effects of her thought across multiple domains of contemporary life.

A case for sex education that puts it in historical and philosophical context. In the United States, sex education is more than just an uncomfortable rite of passage: it's a political hobby horse that is increasingly out of touch with young people’s needs. In Touchy Subject, philosopher Lauren Bialystok and historian Lisa M. F. Andersen unpack debates over sex education, explaining why it’s worth fighting for, what points of consensus we can build upon, and what sort of sex education schools should pursue in the future. Andersen surveys the history of school-based sex education in the United States, describing the key question driving reform in each era. In turn, Bialystok analyzes the controversies over sex education to make sense of the arguments and offer advice about how to make educational choices today. Together, Bialystok and Andersen argue for a novel framework, Democratic Humanistic Sexuality Education, which exceeds the current conception of “comprehensive sex education” while making room for contextual variation. More than giving an honest run-down of the birds and the bees, sex education should respond to the features of young people’s evolving worlds, especially the digital world, and the inequities that put some students at much higher risk of sexual harm than others. Throughout the book, the authors show how sex education has progressed and how the very concept of “progress” remains contestable.

Donald Trump shocked the nation in 2016 by winning the presidency through an ultraconservative, anti-immigrant platform, but, despite the electoral surprise, Trump's far-right views were not an aberration, nor even a recent phenomenon. In Far-Right Vanguard, John Huntington shows how, for almost a century, the far right has forced so-called "respectable" conservatives to grapple with their concerns, thereby intensifying right-wing thought and forecasting the trajectory of American politics. Ultraconservatives of the twentieth century were the vanguard of modern conservatism as it exists in the Republican Party of today. Far-Right Vanguard chronicles the history of the ultraconservative movement, its national network, its influence on Republican Party politics, and its centrality to America's rightward turn during the second half of the twentieth century. Often marginalized as outliers, the far right grew out of the same ideological seedbed that nourished mainstream conservatism. Ultraconservatives were true reactionaries, dissenters seeking to peel back the advance of the liberal state, hoping to turn one of the major parties, if not a third party, into a bastion of true conservatism. In the process, ultraconservatives left a deep imprint upon the cultural and philosophical bedrock of American politics. Far-right leaders built their movement through grassroots institutions, like the John Birch Society and Christian Crusade, each one a critical node in the ultraconservative network, a point of convergence for activists, politicians, and businessmen. This vibrant, interconnected web formed the movement's connective tissue and pushed far-right ideas into the political mainstream. Conspiracy theories, nativism, white supremacy, and radical libertarianism permeated far-right organizations, producing an uncompromising mindset and a hyper-partisanship that consumed conservatism and, eventually, the Republican Party. Ultimately, the far right's politics of dissent—against racial progress, federal power, and political moderation—laid the groundwork for the aggrieved, vitriolic conservatism of the twenty-first century.

This volume takes a unique approach to the question of what it is to be a gendered, sexual self in a postmodern world, offering insights informed by the Integral paradigm of theory and practice. With the inquiry into sex, gender, and sexuality having become so broad and diverse within both academia and popular culture, the Integral approach can help sift through and make sense of the cacophony of theories and agendas that seek to stake their ground in this collective conversation. Informed by the work of thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo, Gregory Bateson, Jean Gebser, Ervin Laszlo, and, most directly, Ken Wilber, the Integral approach acknowledges and works with multiple and contradictory experiences, theories, and realities. Dealing with a variety of topics, including feminism, the men's movement, sexual identity, queer history, and spirituality, the work's contributors speak from across the spectrum of personal and political backgrounds, academic and practitioner orientations, and male and female perspectives. The combination of voices aims to bring forward a more complex and integrated understanding of what it means to be woman, man, human.

The history of American education is replete with educational reform, and to a lesser extent, educational dissent. Consider the present: you have various forms of privatization, school choice, the 'No Child Left Behind' act, home schooling, 'value-added' accountability, alternative teacher preparation programs, on-line instruction, etc. This range of activity is not exceptional. For instance, consider the past: progressive education, open education, the junior high school, the middle school, Life Adjustment education, career education, vocational education, the comprehensive high school, school-to-work, year-round schooling, behavioral objectives, proficiency exams (high-stakes testing), whole language, learning packages and self-paced instruction, modular scheduling, site-based management, all presented as the way to reform American schools, at least in part. Then you have the reformers themselves, such as John Dewey, George Counts, Herbert Kohl, John Holt, Charles Silberman, Admiral Hyman Rickover, James Bryant Conant, all the way back to Horace Mann himself. Dissenters, and dissenting movements, while not as numerous and certainly not as well known in educational circles, count the various faith-based schools and individuals such as Archbishop Hughes of New York.Clearly, this is an area rich in ideas, rife with controversy, and vital in its outcome for individuals and the nation as a whole. And yet, strangely enough, there exists no major encyclopedia bringing the varied strands together in one place as a ready reference for scholars, teachers, school administrators, and students studying to enter the educational profession. This two-volume work is intended to be that authoritative resource. Key themes and topics include: " biographies of reformers and dissenters " theoretical and ideological perspectives " key programs and legislation " judicial verdicts impacting educational change in America " the politics and processes of educational reform and policy making " dissent and resistance to reform " technology's impact on educational reform. A Reader's Guide in the front matter groups entries around such themes to help readers find related entries more easily.