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Speaking their sex: debates on sex education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

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In Sex Education in the Eighties, Mary Calderstone concludes her article with the most common raison d'etre for formal, school-based sex education:

We can no longer allow our young children to be see-sawed back and forth between public over-permissiveness and exploitativeness, on the one hand, and private repressiveness, punishment, shame, guilt, or total silence on the other as we see happening now … Our children are sexual: they are born that way and would not be considered normal if this were not so. It is our responsibility to help parents not to fear or repress their children's sexuality, but to help it to mature safely along with all the other wondrous endowments that are part of being a human child.

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Discipline and Education
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

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References

Endnotes

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