Synopses & Reviews
Curricula in U.S. public schools are often the focus of heated debate, and few subjects spark more controversy than sex education. While conservatives argue that sexual abstinence should be the only message, liberals counter that an approach that provides comprehensive instruction and helps young people avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy is necessary. Caught in the middle are the students and teachers whose everyday experiences of sex education are seldom as clear-cut as either side of the debate suggests.
Risky Lessons brings readers inside three North Carolina middle schools to show how students and teachers support and subvert the official curriculum through their questions, choices, viewpoints, and reactions. Most important, the book highlights how sex education's formal and informal lessons reflect and reinforce gender, race, and class inequalities.
Ultimately critical of both conservative and liberal approaches, Fields argues for curricula that promote social and sexual justice. Sex education's aim need not be limited to reducing the risk of adolescent pregnancies, disease, and sexual activity. Rather, its lessons should help young people to recognize and contend with sexual desires, power, and inequalities.
Review
andquot;Topical, important, interesting, and accessible, Fields's book will appeal to a wide audience of sociologists and educators.andquot;
Review
"In an elegant, candid, and rich qualitative study set in three North Carolina schools, Fields argues that the denial of young people's sexualities is at the heart of school based sex education. Utilizing a feminist analysis, the author deftly describes the constituencies, policies, issues, and people involved in the everyday controversies of sex education. Highly recommended."
Review
andquot;An engaging feminist ethnography. Risky Lessons is the first to examine not only the debates, but also how sex education policy is translated into district-wide cuirricula and implemented (or not) in the classroom. Fields' unflinchingly critical, feminist perspective, combined with her determination to advocate for social and sexual justice in sex education, makes for a vividness and urgency that is utterly compelling. Everyone should read this brave book.andquot;
Review
andquot;Intellectually thrilling, politically timely, theoretically strong and ethnographically elegant, Risky Lessons reveals the problematic effects of abstinence-only education and profound social inequalities, and the social dangers that mutate at their nasty intersection. At the same time, Fields demonstrates the power and urgency of teaching for desire, sexual subjectivity, safety and pleasure.andquot;
Review
andquot;Smart, passionate and engaging, Risky Lessons throws open the classroom door to show the high stakes for teachers and students in our political battles over sex education. It should be required reading for every U.S. politician.andquot;
Review
andquot;Jessica Fields casts a critical lens on the contentious national debates surrounding the content and form sex education should have in public schools. Risky Lessons is one of those few books whose values lies in the possibility of genuine change in policy and practice.andquot;
Review
andquot;
Risky Lessons is a must-read for feminist educators who are committed to challenging systems of oppression by transforming and 'politicizing' the formal and hidden curriculum of the classroom space. Fields provides concrete examples of how this classroom labor can and should be done in the face of immense opposition from policy and social movements that dictate abstinence-only education.andquot;
Review
andquot;Markella Rutherford provides a skillful sociological analysis of the changing dynamics of parenting in the U.S. context, demonstrating how the study of parenting can inform key social questions and problems in novel ways.andquot;
Review
andquot;Rutherford surveys changes in the culture of parenting in the U.S. over the course of the 20th century by analyzing the concerns of parents together with advice available to them in popular magazines between 1910 and 2009. She further supplements this analysis with intensive, open-ended interviews of 30 contemporary parents. Her focus is on supervision, freedom, and constraint. Drawing on relevant sociological theory, the author provides an interesting analysis of changing U.S. cultural norms in an important area of life. Recommended.andquot;
Synopsis
Winner of the 2009 American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, from the Race, Gender, and Class Section. Curricula in U.S. public schools are often the focus of heated debate, and few subjects spark more controversy than sex education. While conservatives argue that sexual abstinence should be the only message, liberals counter that an approach that provides comprehensive instruction and helps young people avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy is necessary. Caught in the middle are the students and teachers whose everyday experiences of sex education are seldom as clear-cut as either side of the debate suggests.
Risky Lessons brings readers inside three North Carolina middle schools to show how students and teachers support and subvert the official curriculum through their questions, choices, viewpoints, and reactions. Most important, the book highlights how sex education's formal and informal lessons reflect and reinforce gender, race, and class inequalities.
Ultimately critical of both conservative and liberal approaches, Fields argues for curricula that promote social and sexual justice. Sex education's aim need not be limited to reducing the risk of adolescent pregnancies, disease, and sexual activity. Rather, its lessons should help young people to recognize and contend with sexual desires, power, and inequalities.
Synopsis
Synopsis
Synopsis
Adult Supervision Required considers the contradictory ways in which contemporary American culture has imagined individual autonomy for parents and children. Using popular parenting advice literature as a springboard for a broader sociological analysis of the American family, Markella B. Rutherford explores how our increasingly psychological conception of the family might be jeopardizing our appreciation for parentsandrsquo; and childrenandrsquo;s public lives and civil liberties.
Synopsis
Adult Supervision Required considers the contradictory ways in which contemporary American culture has imagined individual autonomy for parents and children. In many ways, todayandrsquo;s parents and children have more freedom than ever before. There is widespread respect for childrenandrsquo;s autonomy as distinct individuals, and a broad range of parenting styles are flourishing. Yet it may also be fair to say that there is an unprecedented fear of childrenandrsquo;s and parentsandrsquo; freedom. Dread about Amber Alerts and andldquo;stranger dangerandrdquo; have put an end to the unsupervised outdoor play enjoyed by earlier generations of suburban kids. Similarly, fear of bad parenting has not only given rise to a cottage industry of advice books for anxious parents, but has also granted state agencies greater power to police the family.
Using popular parenting advice literature as a springboard for a broader sociological analysis of the American family, Markella B. Rutherford explores how our increasingly psychological conception of the family might be jeopardizing our appreciation for parentsandrsquo; and childrenandrsquo;s public lives and civil liberties.
About the Author
MARKELLA B. RUTHERFORD is an associate professor of sociology at Wellesley College.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Take It with a Grain of Salt: How Parents Encounter Experts and Advice
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Seen and Heard: Childrenandrsquo;s Growing Freedom at Home
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Keeping Tabs on Kids: Childrenandrsquo;s Shrinking Public Autonomy
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Mixed Messages about Responsibility: Childrenandrsquo;s Duties and the Work of Parenting
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Psychologyandrsquo;s Child: Emotional Autonomy and the Privatization of the Self
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Notes
Bibliography
Index