Sex Education in the Eighties

The odd reader (here in England "odd" means occasional) may be interested in how a book comes about. Members of the SIECUS Board of Directors were planning a Festschrift and dinner for Mary Calderone on the occasion of her 75th birthday. One planning idea was to have a booklet, filled with brief essays from prominent sex educators, distributed between the roast beef and the ice cream. My reaction was that such "souvenirs" find their burial place in the same dusty drawer as the program from the high school prom and ticket stubs from South Pacific. I suggested a more lasting, noticeable "monument," a "proper" (as the English say) book which would draw contributions from both SIECUS and non-SIECUS scholars. 1 was too clever to be trapped as editor (in a 1974 preface, I had written "I swore 1 wouldn't edit another book"). And so I seduced Lorna Brown (into being editor). I contacted a few potential con­ tributors, suggested a few others, convinced Leonard Pace at Plenum Press that this was a worthwhile venture, and left the country. To my amaze­ ment, six months after settling in Cambridge, England, the rough draft of the book arrived along with areminder from Lorna that during the se­ duction I had promised to write an Introduction.

Contenu

1 Sex Education in the United States: A Historical Perspective.- 2 Sex Education and the Law.- 3 Sex Education and Marriage Counseling.- 4 Sex Education and Family Planning.- 5 The Sex Education of Young Children.- 6 Preteens Are Not Latent, Adolescence Is Not a Disease.- 7 Parents as Sex Educators.- 8 Television as a Sex Educator.- 9 Sex Education in Religious Settings.- 10 Sex Education in the Public Schools.- 11 A Human Sexuality Program That Worked: A Model for Sex Education in a Residential Facility.- 12 Sex Education for Special Populations.- 13 Sex Education in College: The Stanford Experience.- 14 Educating the Educators.- 15 Sex Education in Medicine: Retrospect and Prospect.- 16 Sex Education for the Allied Health Professional.- 17 Educating Professionals about Sex and Aging.- 18 From Then to Now-and Where Next?.