Sex education, since its advent at the dawn of the twentieth century, has provoked the hopes and fears of generations of parents, educators, politicians, and reformers. On its success or failure seems to hinge the moral fate of the nation and its future citizens. But whether we argue over condom distribution to teenagers or the use of an anti-abortion curriculum in high schools, we rarely question the basic premise--that adolescents need to be educated about sex. How did we come to expect the public schools to manage our children's sexuality? More important, what is it about the adolescent that arouses so much anxiety among adults? Teaching Sex travels back over the past century to trace the emergence of the sexual adolescent and the evolution of the schools' efforts to teach sex to this captive pupil. Jeffrey Moran takes us on a fascinating ride through America's sexual mores: from a time when young men were warned about the crippling effects of masturbation, to the belief that schools could and should train adolescents in proper courtship and parenting techniques, to the reemergence of sexual abstention brought by the AIDS crisis. We see how the political and moral anxieties of each era found their way into sex education curricula, reflecting the priorities of the elders more than the concerns of the young. Moran illuminates the aspirations and limits of sex education and the ability of public authority to shape private behavior. More than a critique of public health policy, Teaching Sex is a broad cultural inquiry into America's understanding of adolescence, sexual morality, and social reform.

Exposes the lies and misconceptions about sex education taught to American children in school, including information on sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and homosexuality.

The emergence of the AIDS pandemic has forced a sea of change in the debate over sexuality education. Even schools previously reluctant to offer sexuality education now face HIV/AIDS education mandates. Teaching About Sexuality and HIV provides professionals with an integrated, accessible text on the principles, methods, and special issues surrounding sexuality education today. Chapters discuss such subjects as Effective Sexuality and HIV Education: What Works and Why, Creating a Productive Learning Environment, and Introspective Methods: Helping Learners See Relevance, and Methods for Helping Learners Develop Skills. This practical, original, and user-friendly guide will be invaluable to anyone whose work is connected with health and sexuality education.

Conclusions -- Bibliography -- Index

"Teaching Moral Sex is the first comprehensive study to focus on the role of religion in the history of public sex education in the United States. It examines religious contributions to national sex education organizations from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, highlighting issues of public health, public education, family, and the role of the state. It details how public sex education was created through the collaboration of religious sex educators-primarily liberal Protestants, along with some Catholics and Reform Jews-with "men of science," namely physicians, biology professors, and social scientists. Slominski argues that the work of early religious sex educators laid foundations for both sides of contemporary controversies regarding comprehensive sexuality education and abstinence-only education. In other words, instead of casting religion as merely an opponent of sex education, this research shows how deeply embedded religion has been in sex education history and how this legacy has shaped terms of current debates. By focusing on religion, this book introduces a new cast of characters into sex education history, including Quaker and Unitarian social purity reformers, the Young Men's Christian Association, military chaplains, the Federal Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches. These religious sex educators made sex education more acceptable to the public and created the groundwork for recent debates through their strategic combination of progressive and restrictive approaches to sexuality. Their contributions helped to spread sex education and influenced major shifts within the movement, including the mid-century embrace of family life education"--

Michigan State University had a college teaching general education in humanities, social sciences, natural science, and arts and letters to freshmen. At first, these science courses were mandatory for every student, but then were required only for non-science majors. Unlike traditional introductory science courses, they focused on the nature and history of science. Teaching these courses to students who, for the most part, hated science for one reason or another, posed a unique challenge. Professor Alain F. Corcos taught natural science at the university for twenty-six years from 1965 to 1991. During that time, he learned a lot about eighteen-year-old students -- their thoughts, aspirations, and unpreparedness for college life. After three decades of teaching and some years of retirement behind him, he asked himself what he had learned from his experience. He chose to remember stories that reflected the joys and sorrows of teaching young people to think about science. Now, he shares these stories with you -- stories having to do with sex and genetics, teaching, and race from the biological point of view. In Joys and Sorrows in Teaching Sex and Genetics, Professor Corcos combines the humor, sadness, and sometimes both that arose from his three decades of teaching science to young adults taking their first steps into maturity.