The situation in regard to sex and family life education in the schools in the United States is changing so rapidly that anything one writes on the subject may be out of date before it is in print. Generally speaking, more sex education is being taught in the schools than was true a decade ago. So much has been said about how inadequate such education is at present, how badly it is needed, and what improvements should be made, that one can anticipate that the reader is aware of this evidence either through experience or otherwise.
To cite but one example of the situation regarding sex and family life
education in the schools, Bayer and Nye (1964) found in a survey of family life education
in Florida public high schools that the area of sex education seemed to be badly in need
of professionalization. Only 5 percent of the teachers had had as much as 15 hours of
college work in the subject they were teaching; about a third had practically none at all.
Ninety-five percent of the teachers were untrained or only partially trained to do the job
they were attempting in the classroom. Only half of the high school teachers employed
a textbook, and only a small proportion were acquainted with the professional journals.
According to the authors, it appeared that a level of amateurishness was present which
is equaled in few other areas of high school teaching. In a more recent study of sex
education in the high school (Kerckhoff, et al, 1973), questions were put to a national
sample of 52 high school family life teachers who were considered to be outstanding
teachers. Forty-two of the 52 courses taught were in departments of home economics or
homemaking. Classes were typically composed of about thirty boys and girls (mostly
girls).
The majority of the teachers used a textbook (often out of date, however), popular
current materials (from magazines, television, and daily newspapers), and a variety of
pamphlets and booklets, tapes, records, films, filmstrips, poems, short stories, novels,
scales and tests. However, a major conclusion of the study was that even "outstanding"
teachers are unaware of commercial teaching materials and unable to find them. New
materials in sex education were not being used. Yet, adolescents are generally positive
about the potential value of sex education in the schools. Eighty percent of all adolescents
agree that sex education courses in schools are valuable for young people (Sorensen,
1973, p. 425). Only 17 percent of all adolescents agree that sex education courses in
school "can't teach me anything" (Sorensen, 1973, p. 378).
Coleman (1960, p. 338), in one of the more perceptive analyses of the school
situation, points out that the secondary school has not systematically recognized that
a youth culture and an adolescent community is an existence. The school's theory and
practice remains focused on individuals; teachers exhort individuals to concentrate
their energies in scholarly directions, while the community of adolescents diverts
these energies into other channels. Traditionally, schools have been used to mold
children as individuals toward ends which adults dictate. According to Coleman, the
fundamental change that must occur is to shift the focus; to mold adolescent
communities as communities so that the norms of the communities themselves
reinforce desired goals rather than inhibit them.
In practice this would mean that the
school has to come to grips with permissiveness-with-affection morality in some way
or another. How to deal with it is a moot question, for some parents would object, no
doubt, to any credence being given to such morality.
It is still possible to find students in the United States (and even some in Sweden
where sex education has been required in schools since 1956) who have gone through
both elementary and high school and yet are incredibly naive regarding sexual
functioning. The following three cases are illustrative.