Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality

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, Jessica Fields argues for curricula that promote social and sexual justice. Sex education's aim need not be limited to reducing the risks of adolescent pregnancies, disease, and sexual activity. Rather, its lessons should help young people to recognize and contend with sexual desires, power, and inequalities.

About the Author:
Jessica Fields is an assistant professor of sociology at San Francisco State University