Risky Lessons brings readers inside three North Carolina middle schools to show how students and teachers support and subvert the official curriculum through their questions, choices, viewpoints, and reactions. Most important, the book highlights how sex education's formal and informal lessons reflect and reinforce gender, race, and class inequalities.
Ultimately critical of both conservative and liberal approaches, Jessica Fields argues for curricula that promote social and sexual justice. Sex education's aim need not be limited to reducing the risks of adolescent pregnancies, disease, and sexual activity. Rather, its lessons should help young people to recognize and contend with sexual desires, power, and inequalities.
About the Author: Jessica Fields is an assistant professor of sociology at San Francisco State University
Jessica Fields is an assistant professor of sociology at San Francisco State University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Asking More of Sex Education 1 Differences and Divisions: Social Inequality in Sex Education Debates and Policies 37 The Prophylactic of Talk: Sex Education's Competing Lessons on Sexual Communication 68 Natural and Ideological: Depicting Bodies in Sex Education 98 Embattled Knowledge: Curiosity and Understanding in Sex Education 137 Conclusion: Policy, Practice, and Sexuality Education 164 Methodological Appendix 175 Notes 181 Bibliography 183 Index 197
