Sexuality Education Creates a National Standoff in Schools

September 12, 2008
Contact Pam Chamberlain, Political Research Associates

617-666-5300 Sexuality Education Creates a National Standoff in Schools; Public Health and Conservative Values are Ammo for Battle

Boston - Teaching sexuality education in public schools has become the latest power struggle in the ever increasing polarization of America. Even though the latest research shows abstinence-only to be a miserable failure even on its own terms, some public school districts like that of suburban Osseo in Minnesota try to manage the standoff by allowing students to choose between an abstinence-only health class and a comprehensive sexuality education class-the result of a prolonged, and expensive, debate among community members of the district's human sexuality curriculum advisory committee.

In Abstaining From the Truth: Sex Education as Ideology, a cover story published in the fall issue of the research quarterly The Public Eye, Pam Chamberlain shows why the fight over sexuality education in schools is rife with ideology, and the reasoning for the abstinence-only advocates to react and believe the way they do about using the nation's schools to evangelize their interpretation of the Bible.

Public education has always been recognized as a key tool in consigning societal values, and schools more or less decide what knowledge is useful for the populace. Struggles over what should be taught and who gets to learn it are as old as public schools themselves.

"Reacting against what they see as the degradation of culture by modern values, conservative Protestant evangelicals seek the codification of strictly traditional values as they read them in scripture," said Chamberlain.

Two major reasons abstinence-only education has increased in public schools over the last 25 years are the availability of federal funding and support in high places, such as that of President George W. Bush, argues Chamberlain. Although comprehensive sexual education has the statistics in its favor, the battle over its use in the schools will continue. "What began as isolated projects by individuals in the 1980s has grown into an elaborate network of people, places, and paraphernalia," says Chamberlain.

Pam Chamberlain is a Senior Researcher for Political Research Associates, and editor of its Activist Resource Kit: Defending Reproductive Justice. She is an authority on the Christian Right and opposition to the reproduction justice and LGBTQ rights movements. Political Research Associates is a Boston-based progressive think tank and publisher of The Public Eye quarterly.

Look for Full Article at www.publiceye.org.