Get Real About Sex

Book excerpt: “Up-to-date and accessible, this book manages to be both theoretically subtle and attuned to the realities of classroom practice.” Dr Rachel Thomson, The Open University "[This] book is a great success and provides a wealth of insights into the realities of teaching and being taught about sex and relationships." Michael Reiss, Institute of Education What are the different values and perspectives on sex and relationship education within a single secondary school? How do young people think sex education should be taught? What are the challenges facing the provision of good sex and relationship education at the classroom level and at the political level? Young people often receive mixed messages about gender and sexual relationships. When providing sex education lessons, schools should take into account different ideas and values, including the general British embarrassment over intimate matters and differing political and personal views about sex education. This book combines young people’s views of sex education, schooling and parenthood, with those of teachers, school nurses and head-teachers. It brings together these varied perspectives and considers how they reveal different values, aims and agendas. The authors highlight the potential conflict between approaches to education and health, and reveal the complexity of dealing with sexuality and gender in real-life situations. Focusing on young people’s identities in the classroom, contemporary theoretical approaches in the social sciences are employed to explore how gender is enacted and experienced by individuals, and how social pressures and government agendas operate at the level of the individual. This book contains original, first-hand empirical material from a detailed study of all the schools in one English city, and offers a critical analysis of broader political and cultural ideas and values. Get Real About Sex is key reading for students and professionals in education, health and the sociology of gender and sexuality.