“There Are No Housewives on Star Trek ”: A Reexamination of Exit Rights for the Children of Insular Fundamentalist Parents

In this essay, Paula McAvoy addresses the problem caused by the liberal state's necessary tolerance of insular fundamentalist groups and the concern that children raised in such groups do not have a fair opportunity to evaluate their inherited beliefs. This tension comes to the fore around disagreements over schooling and requests for religious accommodation. Often, these requests are treated as straightforward dilemmas — either the state accommodates the group at the expense of the child's future interest in autonomy, or the state must use its power to coerce the group into compliance. McAvoy argues for a principled middle ground between these two views. Using William Galston's conditions for securing the right to exit (set out in his 2002 book Liberal Pluralism) and evidence from Anabaptist apostates, McAvoy shows that insular groups cannot satisfy these conditions. Consequently, when accommodation is necessary, the state must mitigate the foreseeable costs to children by enacting policies that “facilitate entrance” for those who later choose to exit.     

‘Children of the street’: sexual citizenship and the unprotected lives of Ghanaian street youth

Youth-sensitive policies are gradually gaining recognition in Africa. The release of the recent publication Children in Ghana by the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) and UNICEF-Ghana attests to the value the country places on young people's perspectives. Guided by Richardson's conceptual framework on sexual citizenship, this paper draws on four sets of focus group discussions, informal conversations and interviews with 24 young people aged between 14 and 19 (seven young men and 17 young women), all of whom were living on the streets of a city in Ghana. It shows how young people navigate sexuality in a context of poverty and in an era of HIV/AIDS. It argues that the young women's demonstration of a sense of agency, evident in the midst of violence and insecurity, contradicts the notion of childhood sexual innocence. These experiences challenge the view that human rights and sex education are sufficient strategies to address young people's transitions to a safe adulthood within impoverished contexts.     

The Procedurally Directive Approach to Teaching Controversial Issues

Recent articles on teaching controversial topics in schools have employed Michael Hand's distinction between “directive teaching,” in which teachers attempt to persuade students of correct positions on topics that are not rationally controversial, and “nondirective teaching,” in which teachers avoid persuading students on topics that are rationally controversial. However, the four methods of directive teaching discussed in the literature — explicit directive teaching, “steering,” “soft‐directive teaching,” and “school ethos endorsement” — make rational persuasion problematic, if not self‐defeating. In this essay, Maughn Rollins Gregory argues that “procedurally directive teaching” offers an alternative to such approaches because it derives from the intention to guide inquiry rather than to persuade. He demonstrates that the conceptual frameworks of perfectionism and antiperfectionism, which have been proposed for directive teaching on same‐sex marriage, can instead be used to generate open questions for student inquiry, as can a third, civil rights framework. Given these considerations, Gregory maintains that pedagogical guidance on this topic should be procedurally directive rather than substantively directive. Further, the fact that legal, political, and ethics scholars disagree about which framework is more appropriate to the issue of same‐sex marriage indicates that such arguments cannot be dispositive of the pedagogical issue of how to frame classroom discussions about it. Rather, students should inquire into this meta‐level framing dispute for themselves.     

The first organized revolt against the theatrical syndicate

In “The Etiology of Hysteria, “ the young Sigmund Freud defended the “seduction theory,” which asserted that the sexual abuse of children was the single cause of hysteria in adults and especially adult women. This essay argues that one can attribute Freud's failure to persuade his original audience not only to their denial of sexual abuse, but also to Freud's failure to make clear how the young science of psychoanalysis could comport with traditional models of medical authority.     

Parental attitudes about teenage pregnancy: impact on sexual risk behaviour of African-American youth

African-American youth suffer disproportionately from sexual risk consequences including unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Parents educating young people about sex may be one approach to reduce sexual risk behaviour among this population. The purpose of this study was to determine young people's perceptions of parents' attitudes about sex and assess whether these perceptions affect sexual risk. Data were collected from 560 African-Americans, aged 9–19 years. Most (73.4%) thought their parents would be unhappy if they got someone pregnant/got pregnant, with more girls feeling this way than boys (p = 0.013). Sexually active boys who thought their parents would be unhappy if they got someone pregnant reported fewer sexual partners within the past year (p < 0.01) and fewer sexual encounters in the past 3 months (p = 0.01) compared to those whose parents would think otherwise. Our research illustrates that parents' explicit and unstated attitudes are apparent to their offspring, and young people's perceptions can impact their risk behaviour. As such, early and often sex education communication between parents and young people should be encouraged. Sexual health interventions encouraging parents to educate about sex and its consequences could enhance the health of young African-Americans.     

R.S. PETERS AND THE CONCEPT OF EDUCATION

In this essay Kelvin Beckett argues that Richard Peters's major work on education, Ethics and Education, belongs on a short list of important texts we can all share. He argues this not because of the place it has in the history of philosophy of education, as important as that is, but because of the contribution it can still make to the future of the discipline. The limitations of Peters's analysis of the concept of education in his chapter on “Criteria of Education” are well known. In the chapter on “Education as Initiation,” however, Peters offered a synthetic sketch of education that, Beckett argues, points us toward a more comprehensive definition of education, one which, he maintains, can be accepted by all philosophers, regardless of the tradition they work in.     

‘We didn't cover that at school’: education against pleasure or education for pleasure?

This paper considers the common criteria by which school‐based sex and relationship programmes are evaluated, and argues that the domination of public health outcomes serves to make invisible other aspects of courses that warrant attention. In particular, the role of pleasure in sexual development and relations is normally not acknowledged. While it may be unacceptable in most cultures to suggest that teaching young people how to achieve sexual pleasure is valuable, there are increasing indications—from developing as well as developed countries—that public health outcomes may benefit from a greater acceptance of positive sexual experiences. It is suggested that greater comfort with one's own body will enable greater ability to communicate wishes to others, and to be less ‘pressured’ into unwanted sexual relationships.     

THE CHURCH AND THE CITY

Abstract

This article mingles stories and concepts of young Jewish Israeli children about God, with reflections on the roles of faith, memory, imagination, and cognitive development in children's Religious Education. The stories are meant to illustrate, among other things, the purity and innocence of young children's faith, which is largely untroubled by fact. Then, using Vygotsky's notions of children's spontaneous concepts and the development of more mature and accurate conceptions in the “zone of proximal development,” a central dilemma in Religious Education will be explored. How can religious educators help young people acquire accurate historical information, textual skills, and theological methods of inquiry, while at the same time nurturing the precious flame of faith? Can we do better at combining systematic learning with pure faith? Toward this purpose, three complementary goals of Religious Education will be suggested: cognitive, practical/moral, and spiritual.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

Sex Education: Challenges and Choices

Noting public concern about sexual exploitation, abuse and sexualisation, we argue that sex education in the UK needs revision. Choice is a feature of current sex education policy and, acknowledging that choice can be problematic, we defend its place in an approach to sex education premised on informed deliberation, relational autonomy, a particular view of personhood and moral literacy. We argue, however, that choice and the approach outlined must be located in the realities of young people’s lives.     

REASON AND CULTURE IN COSMOPOLITAN EDUCATION

In this essay, Leonard Waks reviews three recent books on cosmopolitan education: Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; Neil Burtonwood's Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism, and Schools: Isaiah Berlin and Education; and Thomas Popkewitz's Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science, Education and Making Society by Making the Child. Each of the three books challenges cosmopolitan universalism. Appiah argues that universal principles do not help us understand how members of distinct cultural groups can flourish in close proximity. Burtonwood adds that the expression of these principles in conflict situations can offend and humiliate illiberal groups and render them culturally reactive, inventing restrictive ideals of cultural “purity” that block cosmopolitan harmony. Popkewitz argues that the cosmopolitan premise of enlightenment for all imposes civilizing disciplines on those the dominant groups perceive as “others,” disciplines that render them abject. Taken together, the three books provide important planks in a comprehensive critique of cosmopolitan universalism as a philosophy of education.     

The Paramount Importance of Experience and Situations in Dewey's Democracy and Education

In this essay, David Hildebrand connects Democracy and Education to Dewey's wider corpus. Hildebrand argues that Democracy and Education's central objective is to offer a practical and philosophical answer to the question, What is needed to live a meaningful life, and how can education contribute? He argues, further, that this work is still plausible as “summing up” Dewey's overall philosophy due to its focus upon “experience” and “situation,” crucial concepts connecting Dewey's philosophical ideas to one another, to education, and to democracy. He opens the essay with a brief synoptic analysis of Democracy and Education's major philosophical ideas, moves on to sections devoted to experience and situation, and then offers a brief conclusion. Some mention is made throughout about the surprisingly significant role art and aesthetics can play in education.     

Thinking through moments of sexual refusal in Looking for Alibrandi and The Rage in Placid Lake

This paper explores two scenarios in which young women refuse the sexual advances of young men in the films Looking for Alibrandi and The Rage in Placid Lake. The paper highlights the heteronormative nature of education around refusing sex, which reinstates gendered stereotypes of masculine as active and feminine as passive. Acknowledging sex education literature over the past ten years which has highlighted that ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty are often absent in the teaching of sex education, the paper examines key moments in films and the feelings they convey, suggesting that such instances offer significant potential for building young people’s affective sexual literacies. By exploring and critiquing the justifications for sex given by the young men, and by considering the Catholic Josie in Looking for Alibrandi alongside the secular Gemma in The Rage in Placid Lake, the multiplicity of reasons for young women’s decisions to abstain from sex are highlighted. Noting the absence of ethical engagements in such moments, it is suggested that thinking through them may be beneficial in enabling conversations regarding negotiation in sexual encounters.     

Moral Pluralism and Sex Education

How should common schools in a liberal pluralist society approach sex education in the face of deep disagreement about sexual morality? Should they eschew sex education altogether? Should they narrow its focus to facts about biology, reproduction, and disease prevention? Should they, in addition to providing a broad palette of information about sex, attempt to cover a range of alternative views about sexual morality in a “value‐neutral” manner? Should they seek to impart a “thick” conception of sexual morality, which precisely articulates how individuals should lead their sexual lives? In this essay, Josh Corngold cautions against the adoption of each of these various approaches. He argues that schools should instead adopt an “autonomy‐promoting” approach, which will aim to empower students, cognitively and emotionally, to exercise sovereignty over their own sexuality.     

Empowerment through sex education? Rethinking paradoxical policies

Youth empowerment is the main goal of sex education according to Dutch Government and NGO policies. Academics from different disciplines have argued, however, that the ideal of empowerment through education is problematic, because of the unequal power relations implicated in educational practices. Building on one-and-a-half years of online and offline ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch youth, this article argues that Dutch sex educational policies inhibit rather than encourage young people’s empowerment by allowing only a limited number of sexual knowledge building practices to thrive while making others nearly impossible. In order to facilitate young people’s empowerment, policies should aim to create space for young people to develop their own themes and priorities, to offer a multitude of perspectives, to set the pace and to use different strategies for sexual knowledge building, including learning by doing and online learning. This requires a cultural shift that involves both an openness to young people’s experimentation, and a change in existing power hierarchies based on age.     

Thoughts on Amending China’s Vocational Education Law

An analysis of China’s existing Vocational Education Law finds that it does not focus entirely on human development or career advancement, nor does it fully reflect the special requirements of vocational education. It does not align the obligations, rights, and liabilities of vocational education stakeholders. The law does not specify the government agencies for its supervision and enforcement. Its terminology is neither standardized nor mandatory, resulting in language with uncertain connotations that lacks solemnity. Based on these observations, this article contains suggestions for amending the current Vocational Education Law, to place it on track with China’s guiding ideologies of “putting people first” and “improving the people’s livelihood.” Specific provisions should be included to reflect the special characteristics of vocational education, clarify the obligations, rights, and liabilities of vocational education stakeholders, specify the law’s supervision and enforcement agencies, and provide for an enforcement system. Available legislative technology should be used to make timely amendments to the Vocational Education Law.     

Mixed-sex or Single-sex Sex Education: How would young people like their sex education and why?

This article examines young people's views about sex education and focuses specifically on their views about interaction in single- and mixed-sex groups. Analysis of data from a survey of 3355 young people (aged 15/16 years), carried out in 13 co-educational English secondary schools (as part of the RIPPLE study), showed that the majority of girls, and about one-third of boys, would like some or all of their sex education to be delivered in single-sex groups. Data from 15 focus groups were analysed to examine the reasons for these preferences. The way in which sex education lessons are 'gendered' was explored by examining young people's views about the ways in which particular aspects of sex education classes (including the characteristics of teachers, the content, teaching methods and age of students) influenced their responses and interaction in lessons. Interaction in single- and mixed-sex focus group discussions was also analysed to provide insight into how interaction about sexual health issues may differ in single- and mixed-sex groups. It is concluded that the views of these young people support the call for more sex education with girls to be delivered in single-sex groups.     

Closing Sex Education's Knowledge/Practice Gap: The reconceptualisation of young people's sexual knowledge

In rethinking what is theoretically conceived as a 'gap' between what young people learn in sexuality education and what they do in practice, this article argues for the need to comprehend young people's sexual knowledge from their own conceptualisation of this. Drawing on empirical findings from research with New Zealanders aged 17-19, young people's own understandings of their sexual knowledge are explored. These findings indicate how young people in the study conceptualised sexual knowledge in two ways: as information derived from secondary sources such as sexuality education, and knowledge gleaned from personal sexual experience. Hierarchies were evident within and between such types of sexual knowledge, in terms of the status young people afforded, and the interest they displayed in them. The type of sexual knowledge young people were most interested in, and which they identified as lacking in sexuality education, centred on a 'discourse of erotics'. It is argued that the inclusion of this discourse within sexuality education programmes might offer one way of closing the knowledge/practice gap, by raising the status of sexuality education's messages for young people and drawing this information closer to their lived sexual experiences.     

People and Perspectives

Abstract

Many initiatives relating to young people's sexual health have focused on under 16s. Yet, most young people become sexually active between the ages of 16 and 19 and 80 per cent of under-18 conceptions are to 16- and 17-year-olds. The shift from school to further education marks a time of transition in young people's lives. It is a time when information and support with sexual health issues is particularly relevant.

Reforms to the further education sector invite a fresh look at how every young person's health and well-being can best be supported. This is in the context of the government teenage pregnancy strategy, which aims to reduce under-18 conceptions. This paper reports on research conducted by the Sex Education Forum with young people and staff in further education settings across England. This research was used to write guidance on the provision of sexual health services for young people in further education settings, which was published by the Department for Education and Skills and with support from the Department of Health and ministerial backing in June 2007.