Get Real About Sex:the Polotics and Practice of Sex Education

This book combines young people¿s views of sex education, schooling and parenthood, with those of teachers, school nurses and head-teachers. It brings together these varied perspectives and considers how they reveal different values, aims and agendas. The authors highlight the potential conflict between approaches to education and health, and reveal the complexity of dealing with sexuality and gender in real-life situations.

Focusing on young people¿s identities in the classroom, contemporary theoretical approaches in the social sciences are employed to explore how gender is enacted and experienced by individuals, and how social pressures and government agendas operate at the level of the individual. This book contains original, first-hand empirical material from a detailed study of all the schools in one English city, and offers a critical analysis of broader political and cultural ideas and values.

Get Real About Sex is key reading for students and professionals in education, health and the sociology of gender and sexuality.Introduction: Introduction: `Get Real About Sex!¿

Sex, gender and education: Contemporary challenges and contested histories

Views from the staff-room: teachers¿ perspectives on sex education

Sexy bodies in the classroom: pupils¿ values and views about sex education

Healthy bodies in healthy schools: joined-up policy and the health/education divide `

Too little, too late¿: Young mothers, sex education and educational values

`Young people¿ not `pupils¿: sex, education and boys not in school

Conclusions: Getting real about sex: embedding an embodied sex education in schools