Speaking their Sex
Debates on Sex Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600006486Keywords:
School-based sex education, children's sexuality, debateAbstract
In Sex Education in the Eighties, Mary Calderstone concludes her article with the most common raison d'etre for formal, school-based sex education:
We can no longer allow our young children to be see-sawed back and forth between public over-permissiveness and exploitativeness, on the one hand, and private repressiveness, punishment, shame, guilt, or total silence on the other as we see happening now … Our children are sexual: they are born that way and would not be considered normal if this were not so. It is our responsibility to help parents not to fear or repress their children's sexuality, but to help it to mature safely along with all the other wondrous endowments that are part of being a human child.
References
Calderstone, M., “From Then to Now - and Where Next?” in Sex Education in the Eighties: the Challenge of Healthy Sexual Revolution, ed. Brown, L (New York: Plenum Press, 1981), p.251.
The Queensland Department of Education, Fourth Interim Report of the Select Committee on Education in Queensland. Human Relationships, for instance, states that the aims of sex education should be “to indicate the immense possibilities for human fulfilment that sexuality offers, rather than primarily to control and suppress sex expression”. Queensland Department of Education, Human Relationships (Brisbane: AGPS, 1976), p.12.
For more information on this period see Logan, G., Sex Education in Queensland: a History of the Debate 1900–1980 (Brisbane: Logan, 1980); A. Gowers and R. Scott, Fundamentals and Fundamentalists: a Case Study of Education and Policymaking in Queensland, A.P.S.A. Monograph No. 22, Flinders University, 1980.
Queensland Department of Education, Human Relationships, p.9.
The Courier-Mail, 1 June, 1976. Cited in Logan, Sex Education in Queensland, p.49.
Gold Coast Bulletin, 9 March, 1978, p.7. Cited in Gowers & Scott, Fundamentals and Fundamentalists, p.31.
41919/30 October 1916, EDU/A 177 (QSA), cited in Logan, Sex Education in Queensland, p.19.
Daily Mail, 13 June, 1917, cited in Logan, Sex Education in Queensland, p.20.
Arthur, R., Purity and Impurity: a booklet for lads (Sydney: AWCL, n.d), p.18 cited in Logan, Sex Education in Queensland, p.10.
Crane, P., Embelton, G., Harris, S. and Stokes, M., Participants’ Manual, Youth Sector Training Program (Division of Youth: Brisbane, 1990), section 3.3
Queensland Department of Education, Human Relationships Education for Queensland Schools: Interim Policy and Guidelines Statement (Brisbane: AGPS, 1988), p.3.
Gagnon, J. & Simon, W., Sexual Conduct (Chicago: 1973), p.9.
For example, see L. Coveney et al. ., The Sexuality Papers: Male Sexuality and the Social Control of Women (London: 1984).
Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: an Introduction (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp.152–153.
Minson, Jeffrey, Genealogies of Morals: Metzsche, Foucault, Donzelot and the Eccentricity of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1985), p.7.
See, for instances, Hirst, Paul and Wooley, Penny, Social Relations and Human Attributes (London: Tavistock, 1982).
Foucault, Michel, “Space power, knowledge,”, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow, P. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p.253.
Elias, Norbert, The History of Manners (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), pp. 188–189.
See Ariés, P., Centuries of Childhood: a Social History of Family life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), p. 230.
Foucault, Michel, Discipline' and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1977), p.157.
See Stow, David, The Training System, the Moral Training School and the Nonnal Seminary (London: Longman, Brown and Green, 1850). For a general introduction to the development of popular education and social management in Britain, see D. Roberts, The Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (London: Archon Books, 1969).
Hunter, Ian, Culture and Government: the Emergence of literary Education (London: Houndsmills,1988), p. 124.
Hunter, Ian, “Culture, Education and English: building the ‘principal scene of the real life of children’”, Economy and Society 4, 16 (1987):580.
Wilkins, William, The Principles that Underlie the Art of Teaching (Sydney: G.B. Phillips and Son, 1886), p.13.
Quoted in Tumey, C., “William Wilkins: Australia's Kay-Shuttleworth” in Pioneers of Australian Education, ed. Tumey, C. (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 1969), p.213.
Wilkins, The Principles that Underlie the Art of Teaching, p.71.
See Lowe, R.A., “Eugenics and Doctors and the Quest for National Efficiency: an Educational Crusade, 1900–1939”, History of Education 4, 8 (1979); Gillian Sutherland, “The Magic of Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1900–40”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 27 (1977); G. Sutherland, “Measuring Intelligence: English Local Authorities and Mental Testing 1919–1939” in Biology, Medicine and Society, ed. C. Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Hunter, Culture and Government; Jones, K. and Williamson, K., “The Birth of the Classroom”, I & C, Spring (1981).
Rose, Nikolas, The Psychological Complex: Psychology, Politics and Society in England, 1869–1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), p.68.
Rose, The Psychological Complex, p.100; Gillian Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education, 1880–1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 27–31.
Warner, Francis, The Study of Children and Their School Training (London: Macmillan, 1915), p.73. This text was a widely used manual for detecting feeblemindedness. For an account of equivalent Australian methods of health inspection, “anthropological” measurement and philanthropic intervention in diet, see Child Study and Adult Health Association, Health and Longevity According to the Theories of the late Dr Alan Carroll, with an Account of the Child Study Association (Sydney: Epworth Printing and Publishing House, 1915).
See McCallum, D., “Eugenics, Psychology and Education in Australia”, Melbourne Working Papers (Parkville: Education Department, University of Melbourne, 1987) for a discussion of the 1911 survey. For an outline of specifically medical and psychiatric tactics see S. Garton, “Sir Charles Mackellar: Psychiatry, Eugenics and Child Welfare in New South Wales 1900 – 1914”, Historical Studies 86, 22 (1986):2; See also C.L. Bacchi, “The Nature-Nurture Debate in Australia, 1900–1914”, Historical Studies 75, 19 (1980):207–8.
Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement, pp.370–378.
Rose, The Psychological Complex, p.81.
See Elkington, J.S.C., Infant Mortality and its Prevention. An Address delivered before the Tasmanian Natives' Association (Hobart: John Vail Govt. Printer, 1909). See also W.G. Spence, The Child, the Home and the State (Sydney: The Worker Print, 1980); and C.K. Mackellar, The Mother, The Baby and the State (Sydney: W.A. Gullick Govt Printer, 1917).
Muskett, P.E., The Diet of Australian School Children (Melbourne: George Robertson and Co., 1899).
Rose, The Psychological Complex, p.31.
Willis, C. Savill, School Hygiene for the Use of Students in the Teachers Training College New South Wales (Sydney: W.A. Gullick Govt. Printer, 1916).
Rose, The Psychological Complex, p.85.
See Hunter, Culture and Government; B. Smith, Discipline from the Classroom to the Community (Brisbane: Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Occasional Paper No.8, 1989).
Hunter, The Psychological Complex, pp. 35–64.
See for example, R. Gillespie, “The Early Development of the Scientific Movement in Australian Education - Child Study”, ANZHES Journal 2, 11 (1982): 1–14.
See, for instance V. Walkerdine, “It's Only Natural: re-thinking child-centred pedagogy” in Is There Anyone Here From Education? eds. Wolpe, A. & Donald, J. (London: Pluto Press, 1983), p.82.
G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: its Psychology, and its Relation to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex Crimes, Religion and Education, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton & CO.,1904).
Hall, Adolescence, Vol. 1, pp.xi–xiii.
Smith, Discipline From the Classroom, pp.8–9.
See, for example, A.H. Martin, “The Present Status of Psychology” Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy 1, 3 (1925) for an indication of the very weak position of individual psychology well into the twenties in Australia. He notes the lack of university courses in experimental psychology and the poor facilities for research.
See, for example, J.S.C. Elkington, School Hygiene. Lecture delivered before Schools' Committee Association, Brisbane, 1910, p.6.
Hogg, G.H., The Medical Inspection of Schools (Launceston: Examiner and Weekly Courier offices, 1910), p.5–6.
Elkington, J.S.C., A Plea for the Australian Child Body, Paper read before the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1910, p.6.
On campaigns to develop competent parents in Australia, see Kerreen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Elkington, J.S.C., Some Economic and Social Aspects of Public Health Work. Read before the Royal Society of Tasmania, July 11, 1905 (Hobart: John Vail Govt. Printer, 1905), p.1.
For an account of debates on maladjustment and early childhood, see Rose, The Psychological Complex, pp. 166–168.
Lovell, H.T., “Psychological and Social Characteristics of Adolescents” in The Education of the Adolescent in Australia, ed. Cole, P.R. (Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1935), p. 82.
Malherbe, E.G., “Delinquency as an Educational Problem” in Cunningham and Radford, 1938, p.582.
Malherbe, “Delinquency as an Educational Problem”, pp.583–584.
Beatrice Ensor, “A New World in the Making” in Cunningham and Radford, 1938, p.97.
Campling, E., “Notes on Educational Efficiency with Special Reference to Nature Study” in N.S.W. Institute of Inspectors, 1928.
Lewis, E., “Can Psychology Help?”, NSW Institute of Inspectors, 1928, p.168.
See McCallum, “Eugenics, Psychology and Education in Australia, pp.40–42.
See Rose, The Psychological Complex, pp.163–164.
See, for example, Character Education Poll, Character Education Inquiry, Melbourne, 1945.
Gardner, R.A., “The Methods of Youth Work” in Character Education Inquiry, Aims and Methods of Youth Work: Report of Youth Leaders Conference Held at Ballarat, September, 1946, p.32
Malberbe, E.G., “Retardation: its Causes and Prevention” in Cunningham and Radford, 1938, p.53.
Queensland Department of Education, Interim Policy, p.2.
Smith, Discipline From the Classroom, p.29.
