Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Overview

The first comprehensive history of sex education around the world

Too Hot to Handle is the first truly international history of sex education. As Jonathan Zimmerman shows, the controversial subject began in the West and spread steadily around the world over the past century. As people crossed borders, however, they joined hands to block sex education from most of their classrooms. Examining key players who supported and opposed the sex education movement, Zimmerman takes a close look at one of the most debated and divisive hallmarks of modern schooling.

In the early 1900s, the United States pioneered sex education to protect citizens from venereal disease. But the American approach came under fire after World War II from European countries, which valued individual rights and pleasures over social goals and outcomes. In the so-called Third World, sex education developed in response to the deadly crisis of HIV/AIDS. By the early 2000s, nearly every country in the world addressed sex in its official school curriculum. Still, Zimmerman demonstrates that sex education never won a sustained foothold: parents and religious leaders rejected the subject as an intrusion on their authority, while teachers and principals worried that it would undermine their own tenuous powers. Despite the overall liberalization of sexual attitudes, opposition to sex education increased as the century unfolded. Into the present, it remains a subject without a home.

Too Hot to Handle presents the stormy development and dilemmas of school-based sex education in the modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691143101
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/22/2015
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Jonathan Zimmerman is professor of education and history at New York University. His books include Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory and Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

INTRODUCTION - THE CENTURY OF SCHOOL, AND THE CENTURY OF SEX 1

CHAPTER 1 THE BIRDS, THE BEES, AND THE GLOBE: THE ORIGINS OF SEX EDUCATION, 1898-1939 14

CHAPTER 2 A FAMILY OF MAN? SEX EDUCATION IN A COLD WAR WORLD, 1940-64 49

CHAPTER 3 SEX EDUCATION AND THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION," 1965-83 80

CHAPTER 4 A RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE? CULTURE, DIVERSITY, AND SEX EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF AIDS, 1984-2010 115

CONCLUSION - A MIRROR, NOT A SPEARHEAD: SEX EDUCATION AND THE LIMITS OF SCHOOL 144

NOTES 153

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS 193

INDEX 197

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An excellent, thoroughly researched book on the history of sex education. Clearly it shows the continued need for sexuality education across the globe in order to achieve sexual literacy for the benefit of all."—Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, author (with Pierre A. Lehu) of Dr. Ruth's Guide to Teens and Sex Today

"Too Hot to Handle offers a sweeping historical look at one of the most controversial school reform initiatives of the past century. Bringing to life the fascinating individuals, organizations, and foundations that advocated sex education, Zimmerman shows how their ideas were undermined by opponents. There is no other book like this one in print."—William J. Reese, University of Wisconsin–Madison

"Jonathan Zimmerman's work is characterized by a broadness of conception that takes the history of education outside the classroom and attaches it to broader trends in American society, shedding light not only on the history of education, but on American social and political history in its global context. In Too Hot to Handle, Zimmerman looks at the story of sex education and takes it far beyond any other work on the subject."—Jeffrey P. Moran, University of Kansas

Editorial Reviews

"An enlightening account of the history of sex education, which is at different points both heartening and disturbing."

Family Education Trust Bulletin

02/15/2015
How easy it is to overlook sex education. After all, for most of us in the United States, instruction in the topic meant just a few weeks during our four years in high school. The mass media, as Zimmerman (history of education, New York Univ.; Small Wonder) points out, has always had a "much more profound effect on children's sexuality in the twentieth century than any set of formal educational institutions." Yet this relatively obscure corner of the curriculum still managed to provoke armies of opposition wherever it appeared. Zimmerman demonstrates how and why sex education remains one of the most controversial educational issues. While early proponents saw it primarily as a means to reduce high rates of venereal disease, later advocates urged a more holistic approach that would emphasize sexual enjoyment and encourage healthy relationships. But sex education encountered resistance from parents who considered the subject best taught at home. Caught in the middle, of course, were the teachers. Partly because of the constant threat of retaliation, sex educators practiced self-censorship. According to one fairly recent poll cited by Zimmerman, one-third of U.S. teachers said that their schools were "nervous" about community reaction to sex education, while one-fifth reported omitting references to certain topics in class. VERDICT Zimmerman's well-researched book is sprinkled with fascinating capsule biographies of long-forgotten historical figures. While the author is not the first historian to write about sex education, his transnational perspective yields a number of valuable insights. Recommended to both lay readers and scholars interested in educational history.—Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted

Library Journal

2014-12-06
A chronological narrative of sex education around the world. Using extensive research backed by an impressive notes section, Zimmerman (Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century, 2009, etc.) untangles the complex history of how and why sex education was first introduced as a specific subject to be taught in schools and its subsequent rise and fall as a teachable course over the past 100 years. First proposed in the 1920s as an attempt to stem prostitution and venereal disease, sex education in Western schools used "models and metaphors from the animal world" to "communicate the ‘facts of life' while simultaneously discouraging human sexual activity outside of marriage." Globally, however, this taboo subject was rejected by those with Catholic backgrounds and those who felt such a personal subject could be taught only within the family. Over time, the inflexibility of various nations receded, allowing students to receive sex education worldwide, although it was often disguised under "new euphemisms: social hygiene, human relations, character education, marriage and family education, or—most commonly—family life education." Zimmerman elaborates on the push and pull of legislators, parents, religious leaders and students; most wanted basic sexual information to be disseminated without actually encouraging sexual activity or promiscuity. The narrative covers the time frame of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s, the discovery of HIV/AIDS, which prompted renewed efforts to explain the sexual activities of humans, and the problems teachers faced as they juggled the need to teach this controversial subject with their own lack of knowledge and the desires of parents who did or did not want their children to learn the details from someone outside the family. Zimmerman's coverage includes the tactics of the United States, European countries, New Zealand, China and Japan, as they've all tried to maintain a delicate balance of providing just enough information without revealing too much. An informative, occasionally dry account of the attempts to educate the world about human sexual relations.

Kirkus Reviews

"A dense and detailed account of a still surprisingly contentious subject despite our increasingly liberal attitudes."—-Lucy Scholes, The Independent

From the Publisher

"Zimmerman's well-documented research offers a history of brave and reasoned efforts - to inform without inciting prurience, to warn without explaining, to respect without offending - that have all failed to win consensus or even to achieve demonstrable results."

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