Doing ‘it’ differently: relinquishing the disease and pregnancy prevention focus in sexuality education

Abstract

Despite policy provision enabling sexuality education to address more than disease and pregnancy prevention, this focus continues to permeate many school programmes. This paper problematises the danger prevention emphasis in sexuality education, examines school's investment in it and asks how useful it is. The ways this kind of sexuality education may inhibit the reduction of ‘negative’ sexual outcomes and fail to support young people's sexual well‐being is explored. Suggesting sexuality education might be conceptualisxed without this danger prevention emphasis necessitates an exploration of what might replace it. Foucault's work around an ethics of pleasure is drawn on as one example of how the objectives of sexuality education might be re‐envisaged.

Notes

1. With the advent of the Health and Physical Education Curriculum in 1999, ‘sex education’ has been renamed ‘sexuality education’ in New Zealand. ‘Sex education’ generally refers only to the physical dimension of sexuality education, while ‘sexuality education’ is considered a more holistic concept (see Ministry of Education, 1999, p. 38).