Jonathan Zimmerman is the author of Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education.From his Q&A at the Princeton University Press blog:
Why did you write this book?--Marshal Zeringue
My mother spent her career in international family planning and sex education. So she imbued me with the standard liberal American view of the subject: the United States was "behind" other Western democracies, which provide much more extensive, honest, and effective sex education than we do. And that's why their teen pregnancy and STD rates are so much lower, or so the story goes.
So was your Mom correct?
Not exactly. First of all, it turns out that the USA was the global pioneer of sex education rather than a laggard. Eventually, countries like Sweden and the Netherlands did develop more detailed sex education than the USA, especially on the subject of contraception. But sex education is limited in those countries by citizen and teacher resistance, just as it is here. And, more interestingly, it has a different set of goals.
How so?
In Scandinavia and Continental Europe, the stated goal of sex education is not to limit negative social consequences, but rather to help each individual determine and develop her or his own sexuality. I didn't understand the difference until I found an exchange in the Swedish archives between an educator in Ireland (where sex education was much more like the American version) and the leader of the RFSU, Sweden's national sex education organization. The Irish educator wanted to know how Swedish sex educators kept teen pregnancy and STD rates so low. The RFSU guy replies with a kind note that says he doesn't know whether sex education actually influences those outcomes, because there are so many other factors that affect young people's behavior. And then he says, that's not the point anyway! It's to...[read on]