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ABSTRACT
Was there a state-socialist model of school sex education and if so, what characterized its form and content? What shaped the specificities and divergent characteristics of each country? The paper explores and compares programs of ‘education for family life’ as these became part of state-driven reproductive politics in late stages of state socialism in three countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary), with a particular focus on sexuality and gender. We analyze how sexuality was framed in these otherwise broadly understood programs, which aimed not just at discussing sex but also interpersonal relations within the family, forming the ways in which gender was to be understood, and sexuality was to be practiced.
We show that school curricula for education for family life, which included sexual education, were introduced in the early 1970s in all three countries, and these programs displayed many similarities. We identify transnational influences in triggering the interest in such type of education and cross-border exchanges that shaped it further. Nevertheless, when analyzing the content of these curricula, national factors and peculiarities become visible, like the heightened focus on ‘normal’ family life in Czechoslovakia, the importance of ethnicity (Roma minority) in Hungary or religion (Catholicism) in Poland. As a result, we cannot speak of a universal model of state-socialist sex education.
Methodologically, we follow the sociology of expertise that focuses on the ways in which expertise forms, links or disjoins, creating new areas of social life in need of expert intervention (Eyal, Rose, Hacking). Changes in expertise thus map onto broader social changes and analyzing the shifts in expertise can help understand societal processes of social reproduction and change. In our paper, we focus on sexological and pedagogical expertise, as these intersected on the issue of school-based sex education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The school subject we refer to here as family life education was called Családi életre nevelés in Hungarian; Przysposobienie do życia w rodzinie in Polish, and Výchova k (odpovědnému) rodičovství in Czech where the word marriage (manželství) appeared in its title in the 1980s (Výchova k manželství a rodičovství). Interestingly, earlier Czech materials from the 1950s and early 1960s used explicitly Sexuální výchova (sexual education) in the title. In this school subject, knowledge on sex was provided along with other topics related to family life. However, as family life education is considered one of the models of sex education, we use the terms interchangeably. Mikołaj Kozakiewicz, a Polish expert involved in international discussions on sex education in the 1970s and 1980s, defined family life education as a model of sex education in which knowledge on sex is treated as only one aspect of preparation for adult life. Kozakiewicz considered this model characteristic of most of the state socialist countries and some Southern European countries (Kozakiewicz, Citation1989, p. 30).
2. More about the history of the Sexological Institute and its changing expertise in Lišková (Citation2018).
3. Such lectures took place for example in the Academic Gymnasium in Prague as early as 1951, separately for boys and girls (J. Bettelheim, personal communication, July 2018).
4. In the case of Czechoslovakia, Kateřina Lišková in her Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style also argues for the liberalization of sexuality and gender as part and parcel of (changing) accents of the socialist state.
5. The Act on the Artificial Interruption of Pregnancy was accepted on law 19 December 1957.
6. Elements of sex education were introduced as part of other school subjects (biology, literature, hygiene), for children in primary and secondary schools. The program was very modest. In grades 1–4, pupils would learn about how to be behave as a ‘knight‘ (boys) and a mother (girls); in grades 5–7, they would receive some information about anatomy and physiology (in separate classes), and in grades 8–11, about ‘procreation and love.’ In 1961, the first experimental programs were introduced in Łódź (4 h a year), then in Warsaw.
7. Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN, Archive of Modern Records). (1965, 09/24). Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (KC PZPR), 237/XIV-416, Protokół z narady, 24.09.1965. Experts from the SCM started to train teachers, and in the school year 1966–67 sex education became part of biology classes in the 8th grade, and 15-year-olds could learn about puberty and human reproduction. See Kozakiewicz (Citation1968, pp. 331‒335).
8. For more information see the textbook Székely (Citation1973).
9. One of the talks was to be held separately for boys and girls (on the broad topic of education towards parenthood and sexual education of youths), one was to be presented to both (on the topic of socialist morality and the relationship between men and women).
10. He added that as early as 1972, the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe had adopted Recommendation 675 (1987) on birth control and family planning in its member states, which was a first sign of a ‘common European direction for sex education’ (ibid, p.19).
11. All these recommendations were repeated throughout the seminars and summed up in Conclusion (European Social Development Programme, Citation1971, p. 65–70).
12. According to Mikołaj Kozakiewicz, the new government used family rhetoric also in order to gain the trust of the Catholic Church (Kozakiewicz, Citation1989, p. 201).
13. The draft of the Resolution no. 71, section 2c (1966). ÚPV-B, nezprac. 1966 50/24/14.
14. Resolution of the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, no. 71 of 23 February 1966.
15. Interestingly, still in 1977 people preferred receiving such information from medical doctors, according to an opinion poll (Hepner, Citation1980).
16. VII Plenum KC PZPR 27–28 listopada 1972 r.: podstawowe dokumenty i materiały, (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1972), 113.
17. However, 60% of the ‘liceums’ adopted the sex education curriculum. These schools represented the most prestigious level of a three-tier secondary school system in Poland and thus receiving sex education in the late 1970s became a benefit awarded to the children of the intelligentsia (Kozakiewicz, Citation1979).
18. All published by the National Pedagogy Institute (Országos Pedagógiai Intézet – OPI): Gál (Citation1975a, Citation1975b, Citation1975c).
19. This message was in line with the fact that at the time, a generous maternity leave (Gyermekellátási Segély = GYES) was allocated to a large percentage of Hungarian mothers up to the third birthday of their child, and that the 1973 population policy directive increased the amount of GYES given to mothers (Tóth & András, Citation2014, p. 18).
20. The book was reprinted six times in the next seven years.
21. The co-authors were Dagmara Andziak, psychologist, and Maria Trawińska, sociologist.
22. Sokoluk was asked to write a textbook because two other prominent experts, Janina Maciaszkowa and Mikołaj Kozakiewicz, had refused to do it. Generational change was in this case a matter of coincidence. (AAN, Central Committee of the PUWP, Education Department, LIX/119, Letter of the Minister of Education to the head of the Education Department about attacks on Sokoluk’s textbook).
23. See: Béla Buda, ‘Az önkielégítés’, [Masturbation] Orvosi Hetilap 117, no. 48 (1976): 2903–2908.
24. Established in 1973, published the magazine called Pedagógiai Technológia (Pedagogical Technology) and managed an education-centered media library.
25. Komlósi, S. (ed.). Családi életre nevelés [Education for Family Life], Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1979.
26. The part on adult seduction was to be held in Grade 5, the part about birth control in Grade 7. The curriculum recommended the invitation of the school doctor to both classes. See: Szebenyi (Citation1981), p. 61. & p.81.
27. For how abortion was framed in the discourse see: Ignaciuk (Citation2014), pp. 75–97.
28. Wojtyła was strongly influenced by the medical doctor Wanda Półtawska, and in the debates among Catholics held in the 1960s, he represented the conservative side (Kościańska, Citation2018, p. 194).
29. AAN, Central Committee of the PUWP, Education Department. (12 October 1987). LIX/119, Jaczewski, essay about sexual education and social pathology.
30. The publication of Michalina Wisłocka’s bestselling book in 1978 was crucial.
31. See the content analysis of the main youth magazine Ifjúsági Magazin between 1965 and 1989 in Tóth and András (Citation2014), pp. 54–82.
32. According to the 1978 primary school curriculum, sex education proper started as early as Grade 5. See: Szebenyi (Citation1981), p. 61.
33. Material from 1986. In NA, MPSV, nezpr. 85, 1200 Zasedání poradního sboru pro výchovu k rodičovství.
34. From Methodical blueprint to the education towards parenthood at the grammar school ‒ Metodický návod k výchově k rodičovství na základní škole (Učitelské noviny, Citation1987).
35. Material from 1986. In NA, MPSV, nezpr. 85, 1200 Zasedání poradního sboru pro výchovu k rodičovství.
36. For more detail, see Lišková (Citation2018, pp. 157‒189).