Sex ed for social justice: Using principles of hip-hop–based education to rethink school-based sex education

Abstract

Forming and sustaining healthy relationships of any kind requires empathy, thought, communication and effort, all of which are learned skills. Many of these skills can and should be learned in a variety of places, including and especially in schools. One of the most appropriate venues for teaching interpersonal relationship skills in school is through ‘sex ed’ classes. I argue that student-centred, anti-racist, culturally affirming and appropriate, inclusive, egalitarian and relationship-based learning environments are necessary for sex education that benefits all students. The principles of hip-hop-based pedagogies, including Christopher Emdin's Reality Pedagogy, Bettina Love's Abolitionist Pedagogy and Rawls and Robinson's Youth Culture Pedagogy can serve as a useful theoretical framework around which to build sex education curriculum and policy. School-based sex education (SBSE) based on these principles may prove extremely beneficial not only to all students and their individual sense of identity and sexual autonomy but also to the general welfare of the public in the long run.

Arguably, the most impactful and important parts of our lives as adults are our interpersonal relationships. How we each see ourselves; the connections we have with our lovers, spouses, romantic partners, close friends, family members, colleagues and acquaintances; as well as the interactions we have with those around whom we live and work occupy a large portion of our time, energy and thoughts. How we treat others and how they treat us can lead to inexplicable joy or devastating depression. Forming and sustaining healthy relationships of any kind requires empathy, thought, communication and effort, all of which are learned skills. Yet, I posit that in the United States, we are largely failing at teaching adolescents and young adults these skills, particularly in the context of formal sex education. Currently, school-based sex education (SBSE) in the United States is highly variable, and data suggest that it is largely ineffective in most places. I believe that if we are to create useful, effective and valuable SBSE, there is much that can be gained by looking at progressive and social justice–oriented pedagogical theories such as hip-hop–based education (HHBE) and critical hip-hop pedagogy (CHHP). The principles upon which these pedagogies are based are the very principles that I believe the SBSE curriculum and educational philosophy should be based.

SEX EDUCATION AS MORAL EDUCATION

Human sexuality is a complex topic with multiple facets, none more important than the others, and people's understanding of it varies depending on ideology, education, experience and culture. Corngold and Archard both contend that the reason SBSE has been the subject of heated debate among educational stakeholders for over a century is that within the United States (and in Western culture more broadly) people adhere to ‘fundamentally divergent conceptions of sexual morality’ (Corngold, 2013a, p. 439; Archard, 2000, p. 18). These varied conceptions of morality create differing viewpoints regarding the content and presentation of SBSE. The complexity of human sexuality and the variety of perspectives regarding its morality seemingly make it impossible to construct SBSE in a way that could ever be neutral or free from values or morals.

With no clear-cut way to eradicate morality from SBSE, rather than choosing a moral stance, I believe that we should construct SBSE in such a way that it highlights both minimal autonomy and mutuality within systemic inequity. To be minimally autonomous is to be self-governing to the extent that one can explore and evaluate a variety of life options. A minimally autonomous individual understands and critically views our pluralistic society within which diverse cultures, ethnicities and religions imbue communities and individuals with various ways of conducting themselves, both in public and private, with different commitments, values and beliefs. To be minimally autonomous is to be able to be self-governing to the extent that one can explore and evaluate a variety of life options. Corngold argues that those who are minimally autonomous maintain ‘enough strength of character, in the face of countervailing pressure, to adhere to the plans, goals, and commitments that he or she has come reflectively to identify with and wishes to uphold’ (Corngold, 2013b, p. 471). SBSE should teach students to be aware of and informed about differing perspectives regarding sex and sexuality and should empower students to make well-informed choices for themselves.

While minimal autonomy and self-governance should be upheld as desirable goals for SBSE, these qualities alone do not necessarily create responsible sexual citizens. SBSE should provide students with reliable and accurate information about sexual activity, reproduction and the associated health risks. SBSE should also empower students to make decisions, set boundaries and communicate their sexual and interpersonal desires to have and maintain healthy relationships. Additionally, it is the responsibility of SBSE to contextualise for students that self-governance and autonomous choice-making within our pluralist, patriarchal, inequitable and capitalist society may not look the same for everyone, and to promote mutuality within a framework of sexual ethics. Mutuality in this way promotes caring for oneself and for others (McAvoy, 2013, p. 492). Most sexual experiences involve at least one other person; thus, SBSE, which highlights just autonomy, minimal or otherwise, is vastly undervaluing the interconnectedness of sex and may also serve to create a greater degree of harm through ignorance of inequity and consent.

An ethical framework for SBSE, which highlights minimal autonomy and mutuality, aims to educate students about their bodies, their sexual selves, the pluralistic and intersectional identities that make up our society, the systemic and societal ways in which some identities are valued and/or devalued, the societal privileges that they are afforded (or not) based on their own identities, and how to make informed choices, which are grounded in all of this knowledge and considerate of the feelings and experiences of others. This kind of SBSE sets students up to be informed citizens, healthy choice-makers, considerate sexual citizens and agents of societal progress and change. As McAvoy states, SBSE should be ‘part biology, part gender and cultural studies, and part philosophy with an emphasis on the value of mutual care and our moral obligations to others’ (McAvoy, 2013, p. 494). Unfortunately, SBSE currently in practice in U.S. schools is generally not serving students well, particularly students with marginalised identities.

SEX EDUCATION AND RACE

In the first half of the twentieth century, at the outset of instruction and education about sex and ‘sexual hygiene’, there were two main purposes for teaching sex education: medical and moral. Groups such as the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) worked closely with medical professionals to promote education for the sake of disease prevention. Other organisations, including the YMCA, undertook the mission of promoting character development education, specifically based on white, middle-class concepts of adolescent development (Shah, 2015). By the second half of the twentieth century, the conservative and vocal sect of the population, those who sought to eradicate SBSE, claimed that there was an ‘epidemic’ of teenage pregnancies, by which they meant illegitimate pregnancies, or those that occurred out of wedlock, 75% of which involved African American teens (Moran, 2009, p. 200). The notion of an epidemic of Black teenage mothers only deepened the already racially biased bent to sex education, which has lent itself to further dissemination of harmful race-based sexual stereotypes of Black women as sexual deviants and burdens to taxpayers (Irvine, 2004, p. 20).

Since the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, SBSE curricula in the United States have mostly taken two distinct forms, abstinence-only (AO) and comprehensive sex education (CSE). According to Kuehnel, there are racially specific perceptions and experiences of sex that AO curriculum does not address, which leads to more detrimental consequences, such as STIs and unwanted pregnancies, for Black youth (Kuehnel, 2009, p. 1244). Higher rates of sexual activity and ‘fundamentally different attitudes towards sex’ among Black adolescents, Kuehnel asserts, are the reasons that AO education is largely ineffectual for young African Americans (p. 1244). In general, AO has proven to be much less effective in reducing sexual risk behaviours, and, due to both federal and state funding entanglements with AO curriculum, states with higher populations of Black children implement this kind of sex education instruction more often than not (p. 1253). AO curricula are ineffective and often disseminate inaccurate and incorrect information, which perpetuates stereotypes (pp. 1261–1262).

Curriculum is only one part of SBSE that is detrimental to Black youth, however. Implicit bias and internal ideation of racial stereotypes on the part of teachers, particularly white teachers (of whom there is a majority), can prohibit Black teens from engaging in class discussions or asking questions because they are ‘constantly on guard against racist presumptions’ (Bay-Cheng, 2003, p. 71). According to a study by Kimmel et al., African American youth's experiences with SBSE revealed that those who were dissatisfied with the SBSE they received reported that their dissatisfaction had less to do with the curriculum itself and more to do with the environment in which it was taught (Kimmel et al., 2013, pp. 176–177). Overall, these young people felt that schools are failing students at providing useful sex education both because of the narrow focus of the curriculum and the prejudiced environment in which it is given. Youth ultimately want comprehensive and useful sex education curriculum taught in a safe environment by people who are unbiased and comfortable.

United States sexual health statistics seem to support this notion of curriculum bias and show the inequity in access to sexual and reproductive health information and care. In 2013, the rate of chlamydia was four times as likely for Black women and two times as likely for Latina women as for white women. The rates of HIV for both Black and Latina women were higher than those for white women. The percentage of unwanted pregnancies for Black and Latina women was almost twice the percentage for white women (Vanderberg et al., 2016, p. 69). Not to mention, due to the inequitable healthcare system in America, the maternal mortality rate for Black mothers is almost three times the rate for white mothers and the infant mortality rate for Black children is double the rate for white children (Amankwaa et al., 2018, p. 316; Lorenz et al., 2016, p. 797). Better, more useful sex education could help alleviate some of these statistical disparities and systemic inequities.

It is not enough for sex education to be ‘inclusive’, it must also be actively anti-racist in order to truly address the lives, concerns and perspectives of all youth. Using anti-racist theory within the curriculum can lead to seeing students as more than ‘neutral’ and ‘context-free’, which is vital for sex education (Whitten & Sethna, 2014, p. 415). Whitten and Sethna outline three goals for anti-racism: to approach racial and social differences as relative to power and social equity; to analyse and understand social oppression that happens among intersecting identities (including race, class, gender, ability, religion, etc.); and to apply this analysis to the individual, social and systemic practices in which they operate (p. 418). SBSE must include content that addresses universal topics present in the lives of all people, including biology, relationships, sexual health and sexual hygiene, as well as identity, social inequity, pleasure, the relationship of technology to sexuality, and mental health, among others.

SEX EDUCATION AND GENDER¹

SBSE in the U.S. has a long history of upholding and promoting not only racial stereotypes but also stereotypes about gender and gender roles. Women are often taught that they must be sexual gatekeepers, that they are aroused less easily than men, that they think about sex much less often than men, and that they must be virtuous above all else (Hendricks & Howerton, 2011, pp. 598–599). These attitudes prevail in and out of the SBSE classroom in many public schools, in a variety of ways, perhaps most obviously evidenced by school dress codes, which penalise and control female students far more than their male counterparts. Within SBSE, discussions of rape and sexual assault are often focused on how potential victims—the majority of whom are women—can prevent these attacks from happening to them by being, acting and dressing modestly, rather than focusing on teaching students how and why not to be perpetrators of these criminal and inhumane acts (2011 ibid.).

Additionally, most SBSE does not address the idea that women have sexual urges and desires of their own, but serves to propagate the notion that when women act on their sexual desires it is either dangerous for them or their character is flawed (Hendricks & Howerton, 2011, pp. 599–600). Bay-Cheng et al. theorised four sexual typecasts of young women: virgins, agents, losers and sluts; they found that the label ‘slut’ is not relegated solely to women who are sexually active, but those whose sexual presentation is ‘interpreted as impulsive, reactive, or indiscriminate rather than strategic, self-determined, and discerning’, regardless of their actual sexual behaviours (Bay-Cheng et al., 2018, p. 700). Additionally, it is worth noting that women with minoritised racial and/or socio-economic identities are especially prone to being typecast as sluts, given the convergence of sexual stigmatisation with long-standing racist and classist assumptions of hypersexuality and/or immorality (ibid.). When SBSE, especially in AO curricula, upholds these sexist stereotypes and negative attitudes about sex, it reinforces these notions within society and teaches students to associate sex with outdated and biased gender roles and with negative outcomes (Hendricks & Howerton, 2011, p. 603).

Upholding and reinforcing stereotypes about men and women in SBSE is detrimental to all members of our society and to the progress of society itself. Additionally, I believe that SBSE should be used not only for breaking down and eradicating harmful gender stereotypes but also for eradicating the notion of strict adherence to a gender binary. In the 2017 National School Climate Survey administered by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), of the over 20,000 LGBTQIA+ students surveyed across the United States between sixth through twelfth grades, more than 46% of them identified as transgender, genderqueer, another non-binary identity (such as agender or genderfluid), or unsure of their gender identity (Kosciw et al., 2018). In a study of 80,000 high school students, 3% identified as transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid or unsure (Diamond, 2020, p. 110). Adolescents who identify as transgender are at higher risk for dating abuse and sexual coercion than their cisgender peers; they experience high rates of physical, verbal, sexual and cyber harassment at school, most of which go unreported to school staff or parents for fear of repercussions or ineffectual handling of the situation; and they experience high rates of discrimination in their schools, including being called by their deadnames, being forced to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their ‘legal sex’, and being disallowed from wearing clothing that is congruent with their gender identity (Bradford et al., 2018, p. 85).²

SBSE is largely intolerant of gender diversity, and where it is not actively hostile towards non-binary identities, it is still harmful in its ineffectiveness. In a study of Midwestern transgender youth and their experiences with sex education, Bradford et al. found that SBSE was lacking in diversity, both in content and represented perspectives (Bradford et al., 2018, p. 93). Participants in the study described SBSE curricula as ‘narrow or reductive’ and that it needs to better include the ‘multi-faceted aspects of sexual health’. Also, transgender students are lacking guidance in SBSE not only on the meaning of and process to developing one's transgender identity but also on personal safety and how to engage in healthy romantic relationships as a transgender person (pp. 94–95). Many more young people than ever before are identifying as transgender and exploring identities beyond the gender binary. SBSE must address the needs of all students, including, and especially, those whose gender identity falls outside of the societal binary. By avoiding the promotion of sexist gender stereotypes and openly discussing identities and perspectives beyond the binary, SBSE can be a catalyst for accelerating social progress.

SEX EDUCATION AND SEXUALITY

In general, SBSE tends to be not only cisgender-normative but also heteronormative, promoting heterosexuality as the standard and acceptable way to live out one's sexual and romantic life. In fact, there are still seven states, known as the ‘no promo homo’ states, whose laws and policies about SBSE mandate that, when given, it must include a negative presentation of sexual orientations other than heterosexuality. One of these states, for example, is Alabama. Alabama Code states that course materials and instruction that relate to sex education and STI education must emphasise that ‘homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state’ (Alabama Code Title 16). Alabama also does not mandate that SBSE must be delivered by trained instructors or that information given in SBSE must be medically accurate. Additionally, Illinois, even after revising their sex education policy in 2020 to be more comprehensive, still mandates that SBSE ‘course material and instruction shall teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage’ (Illinois Compiled Statutes 105).

McNeill defines ‘heteronormativity’ as ‘monogamous, marital, middle class, and white heterosexuality’ and that it is rooted in ‘white supremacist racial logic’, which aims to concurrently regulate sexuality, race, gender and class (McNeill, 2013, pp. 826–827). SBSE policies are fiscally and ideologically tied to welfare policies and governmental attempts to regulate populations, which are often also coded and biased both racially and class-wise (p. 828). García, in studying Latina youth, found that ‘heteronormativity, sexism, and racism operate together to structure the content and delivery’ of SBSE (García, 2009, p. 521). Fields describes SBSE courses as ‘initiations into adulthood’ and as such they ‘hold significant social weight’; yet, particularly within schools in low-income areas with majority students of colour that she observed, she found that the SBSE curricula ‘affirmed masculinist sexual hierarchies, desexualized students’ bodily experiences, and marginalized LGBTQ people’ (Fields, 2008, pp. 165–167).

A NEW MODEL FOR SBSE CURRICULA AND CLASSROOMS, BASED ON HIP-HOP PEDAGOGIES

The dichotomous model of SBSE currently in existence is not serving students well. AO curricula are ineffective, at best, and actively harmful, at worst. CSE curricula are so widely varied that they, too, can fail to be effective to large groups of students. I believe that the biggest problem with the current conception of SBSE is that it is based on the ideology of content rather than presentation. Stakeholders including policymakers, administrators, teachers and parents are too mired in the details of what should be taught, that they have lost sight of how SBSE should be taught, and our society, especially our students, suffers for our lack of foresight. Although, of course, the content matters, I believe that from an ideological standpoint, the creators and presenters of SBSE should be far more concerned with how to teach the content.

Only nine states currently mandate that, when given, SBSE must be culturally appropriate and unbiased (Guttmacher Institute, 2020). While that number is steadily increasing, it is not enough. A large portion of CSE curricula is still steeped in white-centric, heteronormative, cis-normative and male-centric language and ideas. I believe that SBSE can be better poised than any other public education content for forwarding social and restorative justice objectives. In 1974, Paulo Freire conceived of the notion of ‘critical consciousness’ in education, which speaks of the ability not only to recognise and analyse systems of inequity but also to intervene in these systems of inequity in order to change them (Freire, 2005). SBSE should be written and presented from a critically conscious perspective, with promotion of minimal autonomy and mutuality. The principles that HHBE and CHHP are based on can offer some valuable insight into how this kind of SBSE could be constructed.

HHBE and CHHP have arisen as offshoots of Ladson-Billings’ Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Django Paris’ updated version, known as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. These pedagogies are conceptual frameworks for instruction, which recognise that all students come to a classroom imbued with funds of cultural, linguistic and heritage-based knowledge; that students of colour have been and still are marginalised within the Euro-centric, white dominant educational system and narrative; and that placing students’ culture at the forefront of curriculum and pedagogy can lead to academic success for students, as well as create students who can ‘critique inequality and social order’ (Love, 2014b, p. 114; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). HHBE and CHHP look at urban youth culture from an asset-based perspective, honouring youth and hip-hop culture and giving it a rightful place in education. Shelby-Caffey et al. talk of using hip-hop pedagogy within a framework of critical consciousness as a means by which to capitalise on students’ lived experiences within the classroom (Shelby-Caffey et al., 2018, p. 69).

I have observed five main principles behind HHBE and CHHP as recurring themes in the scholarship about these pedagogies. I believe that these principles are the backbone of and grounding for successful HHBE and CHHP, and that these are the principles on which SBSE should be based. It should be noted that I am not suggesting that SBSE curriculum be created or written within the framework of HHBE or CHHP, nor am I suggesting anything about the use of hip-hop music or lyrics in SBSE. I am suggesting that SBSE should be constructed and created based on the underlying principles that I have found to be evident in HHBE and CHHP. The five principles that I have distilled out of HHBE and CHHP philosophy, which I believe should be employed as the backbone to any SBSE curriculum and practice are empowerment, love, community, storytelling and social justice/resistance. As I further explain each of these principles, I will attempt to briefly explicate how I believe each one appears within HHBE/CHHP and then explain how and why I believe these are the principles necessary for SBSE moving forward.

Empowerment

The first principle of empowerment can also be thought of as agency, autonomy, student-centredness and knowledge of self. Akom includes among the fundamental elements of CHHP that it is ‘participatory and youth-driven’, ‘committed to co-learning’, that it is ‘an empowering process through which all participants can increase control of their lives’, and that it ‘emphasizes a union of mind, body, and spirit rather than a separation of these elements’ (Akom, 2009). Students should always have a say in their education. Much of what is currently preached as best practices for teachers includes paying attention to students’ interests. Particularly in SBSE, students should feel empowered.

SBSE educators should have a vested interest in finding out what students want to know about sex, about relationships and about their bodies. SBSE should empower students not only within the classroom, but also within their lives, in terms of sexual, interpersonal and bodily autonomy. Empowerment education of this kind can include teaching students about consent, healthy boundary setting, recognising toxic behaviours, figuring out facets of their identities, understanding societal privilege and how it applies to them, and even knowing their legal rights as young people and sexual citizens. Additionally, SBSE should aid students in knowing and understanding themselves better, including their personal relationship goals and desires, as well as self-awareness in general. Sex and sexuality are so personal and individual, and self-knowledge is key to sexual meaning-making for people.

Love

The second grounding principle of HHBE and CHHP is that of Love, which can also be synonymous with joy. bell hooks defines love as a combination of ‘care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust’ and that the ‘conditions for optimal learning’ are created when these principles of love lay at the heart of the ‘teacher–pupil interaction’ (hooks, 2013, p. 131). According to hooks, teaching and learning in the name of love can provide educators with clarity so that they may properly set the mood in a classroom, with the foundation for creating community among their students and with them, and can move beyond prescribed boundaries, which is precisely where true learning happens (hooks, 2013; McArthur & Lane, 2019, p. 73). Ohito (2018), citing Freire, talks of love as an ‘essential ingredient’ in liberatory pedagogy and that ‘the very act of loving is counter-hegemonic’ (p. 125). Without pedagogical love, educators can neither gauge nor attend to the emotional needs of their students, which can interfere with both engagement and learning (McArthur & Lane, 2019, p. 73).

SBSE are courses that are centred around sex, sexuality and relationships; these classrooms especially should never be devoid of love. Effective teaching, to a certain degree, requires modelling. SBSE educators cannot teach students about the qualities of healthy relationships without themselves exemplifying that in the relationships that they have with their students and the relationships that they expect their students to have with one another within their classrooms. Embracing students as autonomous people with cultural capital and lived experience and truly caring for them as such, not just caring about them, must be what every SBSE educator does. ‘Intentional, deliberate, and authentic acts of caring can influence the identity construction and shape the lived and schooling experiences’ of students (McArthur & Lane, 2019, pp. 76–77).

In a sense, this principle of love can also be translated as safety. SBSE classes, in particular, need to be classrooms in which all students feel safe, free from shame, safe to ask questions, safe to learn and safe to be their whole selves. Love as synonymous with joy can also be extrapolated to mean pleasure. Lamb (1997) argues that SBSE typically eschews the notion of pleasure, both for girls—often portraying them as ‘prey or reproductive machinery’—and for boys—with a notion of pleasure solely relegated to their genitals, all of which has rippling detrimental effects on how people interact with each other not only sexually, but also socially, and can be harmful to the mental well-being of all students (pp. 309–310). SBSE should stray from the religiously based notion that sex and sexuality need to be shameful in either word or deed, and instead should uplift the notion of sex as a physical expression of pleasure and of love.

Community

The third principle I have observed in HHBE and CHHP is community. Classrooms that are centred around love and safety are also classrooms in which you will find a sense of community. These pedagogical frameworks are all about bringing community (and culture) into the classroom and about creating community within the classroom. Bettina Love explicates ‘Hip-Hop communities of practice’ in which learning is a social practice; there is ongoing participation through which community members become ‘doers’; there are established standards, performance goals and communication methods, all of which are intentional steps in building and sustaining a community (Love, 2014b, pp. 110–114).

When students feel as though they are part of a community, there is a greater ability for all participants, students and teachers, to learn from and with one another. The sexually repressive and shaming, hetero-centric, cis-centric grounding of U.S. culture can make it difficult for all students to participate in and engage with SBSE in a meaningful way. Creating a classroom community free of shame and guilt, which is full of respect, active participation, thoughtful engagement, safety and caring is necessary for effective and useful SBSE. Additionally, when students are taught to recognise and engage in healthy practices in all of their interpersonal relationships and are taught from a place of love in an environment that is community-centred, I believe that will have a positive impact on all of their communities, both in and out of school. At its very core, the most basic goal of SBSE should be to instruct people in having and maintaining healthy relationships with themselves and others, which I believe is the very definition of community; I posit that any SBSE that does not include community as a grounding principle is failing at its main goal.

Storytelling

An inherent part of community is the fourth principle that I found in HHBE and CHHP, that of storytelling. Hip-hop is storytelling. Part of building community is getting to know one another, understanding and valuing what each member brings to the community through their lived experiences. Actively listening to the experiences of others creates perspective and empathy for one another, the true foundation of community. Educators can only advocate for the needs of their students when they understand what those needs are. This understanding begins by listening to their students’ lived realities (McArthur & Lane, 2019, p. 76). Particularly for students with marginalised identities, the act of sharing stories, being heard and seeing their own stories within the stories of others can aid in healing wounds caused by societal and systemic oppression (ibid.). Students, like all people, want to be heard, to feel seen and to relate to one another on some level. Storytelling is a way of personalising learning to make it relatable, engaging, representative of diverse perspectives, empowering, uplifting and empathetic—qualities that are inherent in effective learning strategies and best pedagogical practices. SBSE must be created and presented in such a way that it propagates the notion that ‘We are all the same. We are all different. We are all normal’ (Nagoski, 2015). One of the best ways to centre that idea in SBSE is through storytelling.

Social justice/Social resistance

The fifth and final principle I observed throughout HHBE and CHHP pedagogies is that of social justice or social resistance, and it is the principle from which, I believe, all the rest are derived. Empowerment, love, community and storytelling are all acts of social justice. The roots of hip-hop are social resistance. Rose discusses hip-hop principles as ‘a potential blueprint for social resistance and affirmation’ (Rose, 1994, p. 59). The power of hip-hop lies partly in its ability to take things and transform them. Critical pedagogy holds up education as a way to bring about social change through engagement ‘in criticisms of capitalism, inequity, and other social ills that plague institutions and the larger society’ and it is the ideology that underscores all of HHBE and CHHP (Douglas & Nganga, 2013, pp. 62–63). Developing an awareness of social and political issues and a critical voice is a key part of being an active citizen in a democratic society; HHBE promotes ‘civic education and engagement, critical dialogue, and social consciousness among young people’ (Love, 2014a, p. 53).

Sex, sexuality and interpersonal relationships are intricately bound up in personal, social, political and educational issues. SBSE cannot ignore any one of these dimensions if it is to serve students in the best, most useful ways. Callan argues that the kind of base education one needs to minimally, but effectively, be an active participant in a democratic society requires at least two qualities: (1) that citizens are able to discern and accurately explain the most important policy disagreements between competing candidates in an election and provide a rationale for their basis of support for one over others, and (2) that citizens have ‘developed skills at fallacy detection’ and possess the knowledge for obtaining unbiased information relevant to policy proposals (Callan, 2016, p. 81). In other words, an understanding of social issues and an ability for critical thinking are necessary components of democratic citizenship education. If one goal of public education in the United States is to educate young people for being participatory citizens in our democracy, and if sexuality is inherently tied to political and democratic issues, then SBSE should be working to ensure that students are imbued with a sense of social consciousness and are able to view social and political issues through a critical lens.

CONCLUSION

There are a variety of ways in which SBSE can be more useful to all youth, specifically to marginalised youth, and can be used as a means for forwarding social justice objectives for creating a more just society. Buck and Parotta found that giving students an opportunity to openly discuss with their peers and instructors normally taboo subjects challenged the silence and shame that often surround sexual topics, particularly when active learning is employed in the classroom (Buck & Parrotta, 2013, pp. 77–78). In order to be able to have open discussions, though, students need to feel that they are in a safe environment free from peer or adult judgement, with instructors who are comfortable discussing sexuality, knowledgeable about sexual topics and who are trustworthy (Kimmel et al., 2013, pp. 181–183). Sex education, possibly more than any other academic content, because of its lifelong relevance, needs to be student-centred, empowering and free of its current and historic gender, class, race and heteronormative bias (Garland-Levett, 2016, pp. 131–132).

Sexuality is an inextricable part of every person's life, and all people get some form of education about sex in their lives, regardless of what they were taught in school. As such, it can be argued that sex education is, in fact, the most important kind of education we can provide for young people and should be a necessary requirement for all public-school education. Sexuality is also inherently tied to all social identities and can impact the intersections of those identities in extremely public and political ways. The perpetuation of systemic injustice towards minoritised groups of people in the United States is mirrored in the historical and present condition of school-based sexual education. For these reasons, SBSE must be grounded in an ethical framework that promotes minimal autonomy and mutuality; and it must include comprehensive, useful, culturally sustaining and medically accurate information; and it must also be taught through the lens of social justice and anti-racism by well-informed professionals in an environment that feels comfortable and safe for all students.

ENDNOTES

REFERENCES