Something mysterious: Sex education, Victorian morality, and Durkheim's comparative sociology

Pedersen, Jean Elisabeth

doi:10.1002/(sici)1520-6696(199821)34:2<135::aid-jhbs2>3.0.co;2-r

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In this context, anxieties about physical and moral standards of health, coalescing around concerns about “national” (or “racial”) efficiency, encouraged the promotion of sex education in many other countries too. (For historical scholarship on the development of sex education in France see, for example, Pedersen 1998, Stewart 1997; for the United States of America, see, for example, Carter 2001, Moran 2000; and for Canada, see, for example, Valverde 1991, Sethna 2000).…”

Section: “Laissez‐faire”: Sex In School Health Education Guidance Up mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex in Health Education: Official Guidance for Schools in England, 1928–1977

Pilcher¹

2004

J Historical Sociology

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This article examines official policy discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools during the period 1928-77. The article begins with an account of the origins of sex education in schools, and of why, in the early twentieth century, its inclusion in the health education curriculum was problematical. In the main section, the article examines the content of consecutive editions of the government published "handbooks of health education", and of an important supplementary guidance pamphlet, published during the Second World War. It traces the gradual shifts over time in official discourses of "sex education", and in the sets of understandings about children, sexuality and the role of parents, for example, which underlay them. The shifts in official guidance discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools are explained through locating changes in their broader social and political contexts, especially the impact of the Second World War on sexual morality and the post-war emergence of youth as a significant social grouping. The article concludes by evaluating the handbooks as a source for the history of school-based health and sex education and by drawing attention to the wider historical and sociological significance of official discourses on sex education.

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Section: “Laissez‐faire”: Sex In School Health Education Guidance Up mentioning

confidence: 99%