Introduction

Abstract

If, as the feminist catchphrase has it, “the personal is political,” then sex education—surely a thoroughly personal matter—is thoroughly political as well. From the 1960s onward, Americans, like Australians and Britons, have often seen sex education’s political aspects as a matter of party affiliation (see Moran). Children are typically cast as pawns in these culture wars, which show no signs of diminishing; for example, when Dr. David Satcher, appointed surgeon general of the United States by President Clinton, issued under the new Republican administration a June 2001 report entitled “The Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior” urging “equity of opportunity for sex education” through detailed classroom instruction, many conservatives were predictably outraged and many liberals, equally predictably, gratified (see, e.g., Schemo). In the United States, at least, the dominant issue in debates such as the one surrounding Satcher’s report often becomes who should serve as children’s ultimate moral authority. Are social mores, and particularly sexual mores, to be inculcated by schools or by families? How much freedom should parents have—for we often assume that children should have little—to question the government’s decisions about what kind of education serves the public good? How much freedom should school nurses and teachers have to cater to the sex-education needs of their particular schools?