I found this article and thought it covered a few areas that we might be interested in touching upon... incase my link doesn't work just search "Beyond Plumbing and Prevention: feminist approaches to sex education" (author Helen Lenskyj) in google scholar and I think you should be able to find it.
It criticizes general Canadian sex education methods, touching on a number of items that are important but have been found to be left out of formal education of adolescents. I thought it was pretty good how it talks about where the education is at right now, and where it might be able to move towards (which is sort of what we had talked about in tutorial with doing the video in present vs. future comparisons?)
Key topics in this article include:
- sexual preference, including ages as of which this is acceptable
- legal issues as to what school educators are required/permitted to teach
- discrimination over sexual preference
- role of parents as educators
- gender equality (in power roles)
- birth control
- STI's
- HIV/AIDS
- male sexual violence
- sexual arousal/pleasure
It also mentions historical stats on changing opinions towards sex education over time, which might be useful for comparison?
The "Looking Forward" section was pretty good at hitting a lot of good elements that we might want to use for our video for anyone who might not have a chance to read over the whole article...
Looking Forward
What would an anti-sexist and anti-heterosexist sex education program look like? It would validate the full range of human sexual preferences and practices: heterosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, homosexuality, celibacy, genital sex, non- genital sex, and so on. It would recognize differences between male and female experience of sex, and between lesbian, homosexual and heterosexual sex, but it would also consider the common ground between them. And it would not spend time on the 'cause' of lesbianism and homosexuality, unless equal time was given to discussing the 'cause' of heterosexuality.
Furthermore, the curriculum would take into account the social context in which males as a group have power and privilege, and females do not; therefore it would be woman-centered, rather than gender-neutral. It would recognize that girls and women are affected in distinct and significant ways by such issues as contraception, pregnancy, abortion, homophobia, and male sexual violence in all its forms. For the same reason, a feminist model of sex education would include courses organized by and for women, in addition to coeducational programming. Finally, it would attempt to develop woman-positive images of sexuality—a celebration of our bodies and our selves.
Thoughts? Maybe we should just choose a couple topics to highlight upon since there are quite a few??
Slash, is this the direction everyone was thinking?
(I won't be offended if it isn't!)
- Erin
Erin this looks really good !
ReplyDeleteThe key topics that you outlined, i feel would be perfect themes to follow. The looking forward section looks like it could be very useful in our comparisons of past/present and future of sex education.
I feel like key topics we could focus on and find good research on would be legal issues, STI's and birth control. I believe all of them would be really good to focus on but we will have to cut down our focus.
I will find another relevant article next week focusing on maybe some key topics we would like to look at? so post some suggestions if you would like !!
Thanks so much for setting all this up and it looks great!
ReplyDeleteHave you guys heard of the separate term "ze"? Used instead of he, or she: "ze" was created by and for people who don't identify themselves with male, nor female sexuality. If that's where the future is headed, where there is only one generic (ie. Ze) sexual reference, and "the system" doesn't promote self identification of sexuality...So reading the article you posted, in my head, begs the question of whether ultimate feminism is really closer to sexual communism?
Erin,
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a good article. The "Looking Forward" section sets a comprehensive, ideal goal for what sexual education can become (though I am not sure how realistic/feasible it is..)I agree with Lexie that we should focus on a few key topics (or even only one topic as they are pretty broad). Perhaps following with this article, I think we should consider doing the video in a critical tone. So, we could go through time (or just do past vs. present) layout key topics, and for each one explain how things were, how things are, how they could be instead and ultimately how they contribute to the representation of that particular topic in sexual education courses as a whole.
Karen: Very interesting..I have heard about '(S)he', but I know realize that’s really not as inclusive as “Ze”. Though, the whole notion isn’t really that modern- I know that in certain languages they have been using gender-neutral pronouns for ages.
Victoria