When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex--and Sex Education--Since the Sixties (Paperback)

by Kristin Luker (Author)
Key Phrases: sexual conservatives, sexual liberals, social hygienists, Shady Grove, United States, Mary Kay (more...)

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

"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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393329968
• ISBN-13: 978-0393329964
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,409 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting & Fair Discussion of Hot-Button Issue, November 16, 2007

By	CrimsonGirl "homeschooling mom" (S.F. Bay Area, USA) - See all my reviews

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.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating and of questionable value, March 25, 2008

By	Rebecca Allen (Brookline, NH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Luker's structure for understanding the debate on sex in America (it's in the subtitle) is extremely limited. It's overwhelmingly (altho not exclusively) white, heterocentric (that is pretty much exclusively) and suburban/small town. If I thought she understood there was a problem with not discussing the treatment of homosexuality when discussing sex education in America (because she mostly ignores it), it might bother me less, but she's so focused on understanding the different gender roles, she's locked into the conservatives duality. As usual, as a sociologist, her lack of historical perspective undermines her argument. Worse, her assertion about the "original" definition of "hierarchy" is just wrong, and in bending over backwards to avoid words like "patriarchy" and "oppression", she signs off on previous generations' enforcement of cultural norms at the expense of minorities and other groups with little power.

If I thought I could trust the rest of the work, these might be issues I could work around. But there are instances of circular argument; she quotes conservative activists repeatedly without acknowledging bias without doing the same for liberals; she repeatedly misrepresents "sexual liberals" and persists in misunderstanding what her interviewees were telling her.

Her background and credentials suggests she's doing this to "prove" that she's being "fair" to the conservatives. In practice, I kept thinking that she'd be a conservative herself, except for the niggling little problem that she'd have to give up her position unless she could also magically become a man (because doing it through surgery would surely be unacceptable to the conservatives!).

I wish I knew of a better book on the topic.