As of 2006, pregnancy rates and STDs were very high, despite the general decline in teen pregnancy in the United States. In other developed countries, teen pregnancies were much lower than those of the U.S, although STD contraction remained a growing problem. The study discussed in this article was performed in all 83 countries with youth up to the age of 25, in order to see the effectiveness of HIV and Sex Education programs on youth behavior and on pregnancy and STD contraction rates. This research project collected studies that had already been performed on the same topic and analyzed them. The studies had to be published after 1991, have a experimental or quasi-experimental design, with sample sizes that were at least over a 100, and measured the impact of sex education and HIV education on sexual behaviors. These studies were analyzed and effects on behavior were only considered significant if the P<.05.

A three step process was used to identify common characteristics of programs that effected behavior. The first was to generate a list of potentially important characteristics, the second to generate a list of common curriculum content, which were then coded  and used for the third, which was the determination of the process of designing and implementing the effective curricula. The results were as follows: “52% [of effective programs] focused on preventing only STD/HIV, 31% focused on preventing both STD/HIV and pregnancy, and 17% focused only on teen pregnancy . . . Only 7% of the programs were abstinence-only programs. All of these were in the United States . . . More than four fifths of the programs (83%) identified one or more theories that formed the basis for their programs, and often specified particular psychosocial mediating factors to be changed. Social learning theory and its sequel, social cognitive theory, formed the basis for more than half (54%) of the interventions. Related theories identifying some of the same mediating factors were mentioned by substantial percentages of other studies: theory of reasoned action (19%); health belief model (12%); theory of planned behavior (10%); and the information, motivation, and behavioral skills model (10%). Nearly all (90%) of the interventions included at least two different interactive activities designed to involve youth and help them personalize the information (e.g., role playing, simulations or individual worksheets that applied lessons to their lives). Finally, at least 90% of the programs trained their educators before the educators implemented curriculum activities.”

Overall the studies showed that education systems that incorporated sex education and HIV prevention curriculum into the lesson plans for youth had positive behavior outcomes rather than negative ones. It was found that an individual program could many times have the capacity to decrease sexual activity in teens while increase the use of condoms and contraceptives in regards to youth’s sexual activity. The results were consistent in developed and developing countries, with low income and middle income youth, with urban and rural  youth, with boys and girls, and with different age groups.

The article includes a table, that was very useful for my own research into California sex education curriculum, into the subjects broached in successful sex education programs.

Kirby, D., Rolleri, L. 2007, “Sex and HIV Education Programs: Their Impact on Sexual Behaviors of Young People Throughout the World.” Journal of Adolescent Health (40). 206-217.

“Engaging Diversity: Sex Education for All in California” an article included in the book The Sex Education Debates begins by discussing the sex education provided at Jefferson High a school located in California before the California Healthy Youth Act was passed; when the decision to provide comprehensive sex education was up to the district and was not mandated. Jefferson High is located in a racially, economically, ethnically, and liberally inclined district. This school was chosen to be studied as it aligned ideologically at the community, district, and state levels.

Sex education at Jefferson was provided during science by a non-profit, private sex education program. This school is similar to the two schools I am studying, the main difference being that the schools I am observing at are required now by the CHYA to provide medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and are not aligned at all levels. Using a private sex education program allowed the educator to increase the presence of discussion and debate in the classroom, as they were less constrained by social expectation than a teacher would be teaching sex ed curriculum. The program taught in both English and Spanish, which is not an option given to the schools I am observing at, although the program educators were not all fully fluent in Spanish and often struggled to provide bilingual curriculum. For students who did not speak English or Spanish, did not often participate in class. The teachers, ill prepared to instruct sex ed curriculum, did not participate in class room sessions.

“The instructors made use of a variety of pedagogical ap-proaches in the classrooms I observed: mini-lectures, small and large group discussions, and individual work; an anonymous question box; distribution of information pamphlets; and quizzes on local reproductive-health and human-sexuality resources. Many of these pedagogical tools were standard-ized across the classes and designed to provide students with opportunities to ask questions, talk with each other, and participate in student-led classroom activities. All four classes jointly attended a teen-mothers’ panel”

The curriculum is accurate and science based and meant to empower the students to seek out additional resources by providing them with options to research. The students are presented with unbiased and factual information, although sex positivity is not presented. Teen sex is viewed not as a bad thing, but as something that has bad outcomes. Students are pushed to accept this belief.  Students were instructed about, “decision making in relationships; the effects of pregnancy on future plans; the “plain facts” about STIs; basic knowledge about a range of contraceptive devices and their ef-fectiveness in preventing pregnancy and /or STIs; information about post-pregnancy options (keeping the baby, adoption, abortion); and general in-formation about sexual identity.Come On In! and Emily made assumptions about what constituted these issues, their importance in teens’ lives, and teens’ common misconceptions about them. The assumptions were shaped by mainstream scientifi c stud-ies and their conceptualizations of the problems and solutions these studies identified.”

There  were marked differences in the educators approach and the lessons taught in the higher education track classes and the lower education tracks which often included English Language Learners.

Kendall, Nancy. The Sex Education Debates. University of Chicago Press, 2012. EBSCOhost.

“What’s missing? Anti-racist sex education!”, found in Volume 14 of Sex Education published in 2014, was one of the limited articles and research projects I could find on anti-racist education in combination with sex education curriculum. The paper focuses on sex education in Canada, however, I found the topics discussed relevant to U.S sex education policies. The United States curriculum for sex education is approximately 10 years behind Canadian policies that continue to grow stronger, more inclusive, and comprehensive.

The article begins by defining racism and arguing for including anti-racist theory education into sex ed curricula. Excluding race in topics of sex education, thus exluding minority communities from the discussion,  can be seen as an act of racism.  Anti-racist theory in sex education works to “challenge the education institution to see students as more than neutral, context-free youth and to expose the ways edcuation shaped and continues to shape race, class and gender on all students” (Whitten and Sethna, 415.) Although sex education curriculum in Canada, and the new California sex education act, have both worked to be more inclusive of LGBTQIAA topics, anti-racist perspectives are rarely included.

The article goes over the history of sex ed in Canada, which is very similar to the history of sex education in the United States. Sex ed began as a priority of the home and focuses specifically on controlling young peoples sexual behavior by teaching preventative sex practices and portraying sex in a negative light. When schools began teach sex education the curriculum was incorporated into health and physical education. The curriculum has become increasingly more inclusive, but, although working to include different sexualities and genders identities into the mix, have yet to come up with a specific anti-racist program. Most programs in Canada, including the new program in the U.S, tout ‘culturally sensitive’ sex education programs. These, however, are problematic as they “often rely on ethnic and racial stereotypes of groups, portraying racialised peoples as monolithic and static and decontextualising their experiences from a history of colonization, racialisation, and persistent inequity” (Whitten and Sethna, 416.) These programs often promote the idea of the difference in sexual practices in minority  communities as stemming from the absence of factual health information rather than social inequity and issues of access.

The article continues to define race, ethnicity, and multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism being another factor that sex education programs must overcome in order to be truly inclusive. “Multi-culturalism falls short both by refusing to recognize the existence of social stratification based on the intersection of gender, class, race ethnicity, (dis)ability and other social oppressions (Whitten and Sethna, 419.) While celebrating differences can be a good thing, not acknowledging the history of racism, colonialism, and imperialism is not.

The article ends by presenting a through argument for inclusion of race in sex ed, and provides research analysis involving the coding of sex education curriculum in order to see the real amounts of inclusion involved in the sex ed programs children are given when in Canada.

This article was especially helpful to me as a lot of the problems Canada faced in 2014, California is facing in 2017.

Amanda Whitten, Christabelle Sethna. 2014. “What’s missing? Anti-racist sex education!” Sex Education, 14 (4).

Rachel Lambrecht submitted a research proposal to the University of Redlands in 2014. I attained this proposal through on of my professors. Lambrecht’s research question focused around the benefits and costs of including or not including social-emotional learning in sex education classrooms as reported by experts.

Lambrecht argues that current sex education is not effective and must be reformed, focusing specifically on how children interpret the information they are given in school into practices in their own lives. Her proposal explains the necessity of youth learning not only about prevention of sex and safe sex practices, but to see sexuality in a positive light, in contrast to how sex is normally portrayed in schools. There is a culture of fear around sex education that posits safe sex as mutually exclusive to sex for pleasure. Body positive language is rarely included. Lambrecht wants to research how social emotional learning can be included using the opinion’s of experts.  As Lambrecht’s proposal uses expert knowledge in order to understand an aspect of sex education, our projects are quite similar. Although, my focus is specific to California’s new sex education standards as of 2016.

Lambrecht proposes to do snowball sampling, first reaching out to experts within her own network, and then learning of others from her interviews. Her interviews used open-ended questions and would be categorized as qualitative research. As she is interviewing, Lambrecht would need to attain the Institutional Review Boards Approval of the topic, however, the risks are minimal. Her research does not work with any vulnerable populations, and as she planned to only interview experts in their own field, there is very little chance even for job retaliation. This part of the research differs from my own, as although I am also interviewing experts, my research does have a slight risk of job retaliation, and so I must set up further precautions to protect my participants.

Lambrecht’s proposal is very similar to how I would imagine my own proposal, however, less complicated. Her project seems simpler and her question addressing a broader issue. My research question is very specific to California and I am looking for multiple data types. I am involved with vulnerable populations, although not interviewing them. Thus, my proposal would be different in many aspects.

“The Use and Misuse of Pleasure in Sex Education Curricula” uses qualitative, thematic analysis of sex education curriculum in America over a decade to understand how pleasure discourse has and hasn’t been incorporated into sexuality curriculum. Pleasurable sex is often linked in sex education curriculum to negative outcomes such as unwanted pregnancy or STD’s, proposing that pleasurable sex and safe sex are mutually exclusive.

Michelle Fine, sited in the article, wrote about the lack of female pleasure in sex education curriculum, arguing that while female victimization was broached it was not included with female pleasure in sexual situations. The debate over sex education pleasure inclusive curriculum has continued since Fine’s article in 1988. Many sex education program including those that have accepted funding for Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) programs provide fear-based sex education programs instead of presenting sexuality in a positive and healthy light, thus promoting sexual stereotypes. The lack of pleasure based curriculum is problem with both abstinence based and comprehensive sex ed programs.

Teaching fear based curriculum promotes trends of slut shaming or negative messages involving female sexuality.

“While President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have called for an end of funding for programmes that do not have evidence to support their effectiveness and have recommended increasing funding to states for teenage pregnancy prevention programmes (Guttmacher Institute 2009), in 2010 the US Congress elected to maintain $50 million of funding for states that wanted to continue to use AOUM curricula”( Lamb, Lustig, Graling, 2013.)

The three researchers studied three different types of curriculum across a decade including AOUM, comprehensive sex education (including sex education that is built to fit into a abstinence promoted curriculum), and liberal, private, sex education programs offered outside of school. “This sample included four AOUM curricula, six CSE curricula, and one nonschool-based CSE curriculum” (Lamb, Lustig, Graling, 2013.)

In regards to the teaching of the body in sex education curriculum, pleasure is often referred to in medical terms which has both benefits and costs. The benefits include a normalization of pleasure, taking away stereotypes that condemn masturbation or pleasure centers in the body, however the costs play out when the conversation of pleasure is not carried out into normal conversations between the educators and students, and thus may not fully inform students, promote dialogue, or even ostracize students who experience alternative forms of pleasure or who identify as asexual. Lamb, Lustig, and Graling note that most scientific oriented curriculum discussing the sexuality of the body leave out the anus as a potential pleasure center for males.

Pleasure was often equated to dangerous and opposed to safe sex. Whilst Lamb, Lustig, and Graling note that sex can be both pleasurable and safe, using the example of condom use, although wearing a condom may decrease some bodily pleasure, the knowledge that both partners are safe, may increase emotional pleasure. They also note that both parties may engage in sexual acts that do not require penetration to achieve pleasure.

Pleasure is also seen as opposed to self-control. This model of sex that involves pleasure as hormonally overwhelming presents that argument that sex is animalistic in nature. This argument is very problematic, promoting the ideology that inclusion of pleasure is mutually exclusive to choice. This presentation of sex is promotional of rape culture in essence. Pleasure is also posited to pressure and regret within relationships in sex education curriculum, unless within a monogamous relationship, which is seen as a safe place to practice sex pleasure between two individuals.

This research is very interesting in regards to my senior thesis on California’s new sex education standards implemented in the California Healthy Youth Act. Comprehensive sex education is now required in California, and has been updated to include many new issues that were not addressed in the previous curriculum, however pleasure not being one of them.

http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.books.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=17&sid=7ad68c02-a035-4858-a840-6fa112010103%40sessionmgr4008&hid=4104

Lamb, S., Lustig, K., Graling, K., (2013). The Use and Misuse of Pleasure in Sex Education Curricula, 13(3), 305-318.

The article, “Minimizing Harm and Maximizing Pleasure: Considering the Harm Reduction Paradigm for Sexuality Education”, by Michael Naisteter and Justin Sitron,  has four goals: to define the goals of a comprehensive sexual education program as well as an HIV/STI prevention program, to analyze the absence of pleasure as a topic for sex education program for youth, to define and identify harm reduction based sex education, and, lastly, to offer specific suggestions for implementing pleasure and harm reduction oriented topics into the current sexual education curriculum.

The article begins by arguing that a comprehensive sex education program not only includes disease and pregnancy prevention, which is only one small portion of sex safety, but must also include, “sexual development, sexual and reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles” (Naisteter and Sitron, 102.) Since the HIV epidemic in 1980s sex education has been primarily focused on prevention of pregnancy and STIs through the use of contraceptives, abstinence, and identification of risky behaviors. This curriculum has continued with the focus of sex education programs on abstinence only.

“Primary prevention operates in a paradigm of risk preemption by exclusively focusing on teaching participants to avoid negative health consequences before they transpire (Broom, 2008). Proponents often emphasize evidence-based programs, medicalization, and behavioral risk (Broom, 2008).” (Naisteter and Sitron, 104.) The article argues that positing safe sex versus unsafe sex sets up a dichotomy that only allows sex educators to teach about sexuality in a negative light rather than teaching that sex, including sex for pleasure, can be positive with risk prevention.

Naisteter and Sitron argue that sex education should be set up on a spectrum that does not polarize any group of people, including those who have sex for pleasure, those who have already contracted STDs or STIs, and who have practiced risky sexual behavior in the past. As sex education is currently, solely based on risk prevention, pleasure is seen as mutually exclusive to safety. The article argues that sex education should be reformed to include a spectrum that includes sex that is not inhibited by sexual safety on one end and sex that is hindered by sexual safety on the other.

By introducing harm reduction programs that view sex positively and acknowledge pleasure. Harm reduction programs would allow sex educators to speak to a wide variety of people who have different sexual histories and promote safe sex including pleasure in a positive light. Incorporated into current sex education curriculum, harm reduction and pleasure based curriculum would have to loo for alternatives to teaching only safe versus unsafe practices, abstinence only, and the use of the condom as the only birth control.

Broom, D. (2008). Hazardous good intentions? Unintended consequences of the project of prevention. Health Sociology Review, 17(2), 129–140.

Naisteter, M., Sitron, J. (2010). Minimizing Harm and Maximizing Pleasure: Considering the Harm Reduction Paradigm for Sexuality Education. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 5, 101-115.

In the article “Understanding Transgender Identity Development in Childhood and Adolescence”, Dr. Boskey argues for the inclusion of gender identity topics in U.S sex education curriculum and provides different manners in which trans issues could be incorporated into current sex education standards. Although some states in the U.S, including California, now include conversations about sexuality in a positive light, while others mention sexuality but only in a negative light, sex education curriculum is lacking information on trans and gender identity issues in all states.

In the past this lack of representation in Sex Ed curriculum has been to understandings of youth’s identifications as trans as minimal and scarce, however Dr. Boskey argues the data supporting these understandings are often under representing the actual population of trans youth. She sites a study by Schreier, Moller, Li, and Romer, stating that 6% of young boys and 12% of young girls exhibit cross-gender behavior. She approximates that given the census of 316 million in the U.S in 2013, about 1.5 to 6 million Americans identify as transgender.

Dr. Boskey continues to argue that trans issues are not new and are very rarely addressed in school, although individuals identifying off the gender binary are more susceptible to emotional disorders, negative self-imagery, trauma, and abuse. By providing gender identification sections within sex education curriculum and self-image/ beauty curriculum already present in sex ed, for youth attending K-12 public schools, curriculum should promote compassionate and understanding toward their non-conforming peers in order to stem bullying and trauma, and body positive curriculum for  trans youth and cis-youth. While talking about gender identity educators would also have the opportunity to discuss the prevalence of gender roles that may adversely affect both men, women, and non-binary youth.

Children become aware of gender as young as the age of 2 and thus gender should be brought into a dialogue in a age appropriate lessons by elementary school and kindergarten. By middle school, when most students will begin the process of puberty, gender issues are especially important, as puberty can be a very traumatic, dysphoric, and stressful time for students who are non-binary conforming to go through, whilst also not receiving any formal acknowledgment of their struggles or any information or support from their academic mentors.

Dr. Boskey concludes that trans issues are not only important and necessary to the growing population of non-binary identifying students, but also broach issues important to cis and heterosexual youth about gender roles, puberty, bullying, and sexuality.

Boskey, Elizabeth. Understanding Transgender Identity Development in Childhood and Adolescence. American Journal of Sexuality Education. (Taylor and Francis, 2014.)

In the article, “Masculinity, American Modernity, and Body Modification: A Feminist Reading of American Eunuchs“, Brenda R. Weber critically analyzes the documentary American Eunuchs from a historical feminist perspective in order to understand the motivations behind male body modification in regards to masculine culture. Weber begins by siting Margrit Shildrick’s research in regards to Western culture’s dominant beliefs regarding the body. Shildrick argues that Western intellectuals have posited the body as hindering to reason and when subjugated to modification has the ability to reach a higher plane of knowledge. The ability to transcend the body has historically been seen as a trait of masculinity and in opposition to this lies the feminine, which is rooted in body. This juxtaposition of the masculine as the ability to transcend the body and the feminine as wholly rooted within the body has played a role in gender, race, and class inequality ( as those of lower socioeconomic status and oppressed racial identities have been historically depicted as feminine).

Weber uses Shildrick’s observations and applies them to to her own analysis of the American Eunich in opposition to the stance of the filmmakers who posited the film from the perspective of body modification as one dangerous outcome of American modernity and freedom. Although the documentary surveys the life of three men in order to tell their stories, the film is highly edited and depicts the men as compromising their masculinity through body mutilation. Weber argues the film lacks introspection beyond depicting the men as new-age freaks, and does not account or address the history and culture behind non-normative bodies.

Weber continues to combat the use of freaks by presenting her definition of freak rooted in the history of freak shows and then follows the stories of each of the men featured in the documentary. Weber notes, though not expanded upon by the filmmakers, the documentaries inclusion of interviews with all three men featured positing that they used the body modification surgery to remove their genitals in order gain further control over their masculinity. In contrast to Sigmund Freud’s theory about the fears of men involving the physical removal of genitals linked to their masculinity and power thus leaving them in a state that is more markedly feminine, ironically the men featured in the documentary feel more powerful without their phallic body parts due to their ability to control their hormones and thus achieve higher control over their bodies and minds. By removing their physical masculinity, they are ironically performing a thoroughly masculine act.

Weber concludes that the men’s want to move out of the realm of gender conformity  through performing individualized acts of body modification that physically represents their identification as neither male or female but simply human, also “creates the terms for the hyper articulation of gender codes” (Weber, 2013: 691.)

Although this article is not specifically about sex education, I found through reading the article about the physical and mental contributions of acknowledging, removing, ignoring, or keeping ones genitalia enlightening in regards to how sex educators talk about genitalia in the classroom. Genitals are often regarded as taboo and showing images of them, even though educational, non-sexual in goal, and constructive are still seen as breaching proper conduct with minors in the classroom. How does sex education and the way American students, specifically in California, are taught about the body parts they all have set the stage for performative body modification or self identification with ones genitals?

Weber, Brenda (2013). Masculinity, American Modernity, and Body Modification: A Feminist Reading of American Eunuchs. The Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 38(3).