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When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex--And Sex Education--Since the Sixties [Hardcover]

Kristin Luker (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Book Description

May 29, 2006
There's a sexual revolution coming to a schoolroom near you, but it's not the one you remember.

When Sex Goes to School explores the ideas and values behind the fight over sex education through the lives of parents, its most passionate participants. Distinguished sociologist Kristin Luker spent over twenty years talking to people in ordinary communities about sex and how, if at all, it should be taught. Luker argues that Americans are now deeply divided over sex, largely as a legacy of the 1960s. She traces sex education from its birth in 1913 to its more politicized modern incarnation, examining in detail the marriage-minded 1950s and the sexual and gender revolutions of the 1960s. She explores how our parents' sexual attitudes have influenced us and, in turn, how our sexual choices affect the way we teach our children about sex. Her conclusions are unexpected, and after reading this book it is impossible to look at the intersection of the intimate and the political in the same way.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Luker, a University of California– Berkeley sociologist and author (Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood), gingerly examines the issues of sex education that divide communities along political lines or between the competing visions of sex as pleasure versus sex as danger. Luker interviews parents and leaders in several representative communities (she doesn't identify their states): Shady Grove, a once-rural West Coast town where two sides are battling over a new human sexuality curriculum; Billingsley, a Southern agrarian town where everyone is a churchgoer and which still boasts an "astonishing variety of views"; a new West Coast community Luker calls Las Collinas, which promotes the sex education approach called abstinence only; and Lincoln Township, an affluent community in the eastern rust belt. Many voices express concern that the last three decades' approach to sex education in America, pushed by groups responding to the crisis in teen pregnancy and AIDS, is inadequate and even harmful, diminishing the importance of marriage and morality. Luker reaches back to the Progressive Era in elucidating this debate's roots, and examines the 1960s' focus on management of risk rather than deterrence. Her work is investigative and evenhanded, and cuts through the murk of values versus pragmatism. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Kristin Luker is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley as well as a professor at Boalt Law School. She is the author of Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, and lives in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton; 1 edition (May 29, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393060896
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393060898
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #921,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great writing from a great sociologist, September 19, 2007
By 
Stefani (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This was an engaging book to read and it was also well researched. I had Kristen Luker as a professor and true to form, she is fair in her research and portrays both sides of an issue so that each makes sense to the reader. She is a very talented sociologist and unlike some sociologists, she's also manages to write an interesting book. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the debate over sex education.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting & Fair Discussion of Hot-Button Issue, November 16, 2007
I was pleasantly surprised by the generally fair presentation by Dr. Luker in "When Sex Goes to School". Given that she is a feminist sociologist at UC Berkeley, I had expected a very biased treatment of those holding traditional views of sexuality. However, she demonstrated a real understanding of the issues, particularly in how conservatives are not "anti-sex" (the typical liberal claim) but in actuality value sex very highly as something sacred. The whole battle stems from the two sides holding fundamentally different views of sexuality: something "natural" vs. something sacred.

The one thing that annoyed me about the book was Dr. Luker's stereotypes about conservative women. She portrays them all as less interested in education & career and believers in patriarchy. We may be traditional in certain areas, but that doesn't mean we're traditional in *everything*. We may be bright & ambitious, feel that men & women are equal (although not identical), and still hold that the proper place for sex is between a husband & wife.
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14 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but limited, October 23, 2006
By 
This review is from: When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex--And Sex Education--Since the Sixties (Hardcover)
Kristin Luker has chosen a curious method to produce a strange amalgam of a book: she talks to local extremists so she can use sex education as a prism for understanding sex in America.

While the political battles over sex education might deserve a book unto themselves, and while sex education certainly can't be divorced from our culture's shifting notions about sexuality, Luker's method leaves one wondering how much one has actually learned about either from reading the book.

As Luker acknowledges in passing, her method of choosing subjects to interview leaves out the entire sensible center, if such there be, on debates about sex education. And as she makes clear, passionate extremists on both sides of the fights generally have difficulty articulating their reasons clearly, and they generally don't understand each other very well. Luker provides on her interviewees' behalfs the articulation they can't provide for themselves. Curious research method, don't you think?

Luker offers that the warring camps fall into the "sacralists" versus the "secularists." I suspect readers will differ on how adequate they find these grossly simplified generalizations. I find some value, in sort of a quick-sketch-on-the-back-of-a-napkin sense, in drawing the contrasts as Luker draws them.

But I'm not entirely enthusiastic about Luker's belief that she's found a good prism for viewing sex in America. Local extremists all worked up about school curricula may not be the most representative sample on the broader issue of sex in our society.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
sexual conservatives, sexual liberals, social hygienists, abstinence advocates, first sexual revolution, comprehensive sex education, sex education curriculum, conservative parents, sex educators, abstinence education
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Shady Grove, United States, Mary Kay, Las Colinas, African Americans, World War, Anna Garlin Spencer, Catholic Church, Southern Baptists, Susan Shelly, West Coast, Reverend Smithers, Planned Parenthood, Grace Dodge, French Revolution, Ten Commandments, Supreme Court, New Right, Steven Kingsley, Reverend Thomassen, Sandy Ames, Melanie Stevens, American Social Hygiene Association, Elaine Devoto, Dave Webber
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