A Q&A with Margaret Grace Myers
The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs—has been available since the 1990s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and twenty-two states do not require sex ed in public schools at all.
In The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine, writer, advocate, and historian Margaret Grace Myers shows us how we got here. While the earliest calls for sex ed came from a coalition of religious leaders and doctors at the turn of the century who sought to control the prevalence of STIs, the advent of antibiotics and modern condoms meant that abstinence was no longer good public health policy. The religious right, however, continued to frame it as such, using its impressive machinery to replace scientific facts with conservative Christian values. Myers also shows how the religious right has worked to narrow the discourse around sex ed, decade after decade, often dictating the terms of debate almost entirely. We caught up with her to have a two-part chat about her book. This is part two of two. Read part one.
Beacon Press: You write that sex ed is about much more than biology. How does it connect to broader issues like gender equality and reproductive justice?
Margaret Grace Myers: This is another question that has a much more nuanced answer than it might seem.
Sex ed, from the very beginning, has always had to push back against this idea that it was teaching “just the facts.” This was one of the things that early critics, along with contemporary critics, were extremely concerned about—that students were being taught “raw facts” without the “correct” moral context. In fact, it is one of the foundational tenets of sex ed—of all versions of sex ed—that there is always a moral context. In all of the research I did for this book, I never once found a curriculum or teacher who claimed to be teaching “just the facts.”
Until the late 1960s, this context was typically Christian morality. Sex education was taught with the understanding that young people were being instructed not only in the biological facts of sex, but in how to be in the world as a sexual person (though that wouldn’t have been the phrasing!) within a “moral” context. Very often, this was overtly Christian, and sometimes more veiled. It is why we so often see sex ed as part of home economics classes, why some people may remember pretending to get married as a part of a high school assignment. It was all part of this holistic approach to sex ed, sometimes under the class named “family life education,” that talked about relationships and self-image and hygiene.
Then came the late 1960s, when it seemed like almost all parts of American life were being re-evaluated. This is when we really see cracks forming between what would become abstinence-only sex ed, which would uphold those Christian values, and comprehensive sex ed, which would come to think much differently about how sex ed could be used.
Comprehensive sex ed, which by definition is evidenced based and medically accurate, also teaches about healthy relationships, gender, and sexuality. The outcomes from CSE programs are really remarkable, and have been proven to increase inclusivity, decrease intimate partner violence, and promote healthy relationships in addition to showing lower rates of STIs and pregnancies among teens. Abstinence-only sex ed does not show the same outcomes.
BP: How have parents, educators, and students successfully pushed back against restrictive sex ed policies in the past? And what is happening on the ground today?
MGM: Both the people who have fought for and against the most restrictive policies and “won” have one thing in common: perseverance. Throughout researching this book, I was amazed by the people on both sides who just continued to show up wherever the fight was happening, day after day, week after week, and sometimes year after year.
These fights can go on for years. In Louisiana, sex ed was de facto banned for a decade. One lawmaker, state Representative Alphonse Jackson, introduced bills repealing the ban for years in a row. He was mocked in the press, but he just kept coming back. It was amazing.
What I think people who care about restrictive sex ed policies and want to push back against them can really learn from those who have enacted those policies, is that mucking up the system, not doing things elegantly, and not letting it go is often really the way that things get changed. In the book, I mention one school board meeting that was 13.5 hours long. Yes, 13.5, from 8AM to 9:30PM. People showed up because they cared and they did not let it go.
I lost track of how many school boards seemed to capitulate to angry parents who complained about the very idea of sex ed, regardless of how well planned, vetted, and researched the curriculum was. The protesters in these cases were almost uniformly against what they thought of as “too permissive” sex ed, and very rarely—although sometimes!—did I see the same fight against abstinence-only sex ed.
BP: For people who care about improving sex ed in their communities but feel overwhelmed, where can they start?
MGM: Related to the last question, the best thing that a person can do is educate themselves about what sex ed looks like in their community. Are there state guidelines? District guidelines? Does the school down the street teach sex ed, or health, or something else? What curriculum do they use? Sometimes this information will be easier to find than others.
School board elections and school board meetings are also key. Of course, having the time and energy to research and attend these meetings, etc., is often in short supply, which is another reason why abstinence-only sex ed has gotten as far as it has!
But, if possible, I really encourage making it your business to learn, and to care. Even if someone is not a parent or student themselves, it is a matter of public health—and the public good!—to find out and to advocate for comprehensive sex ed.
BP: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
MGM: First and foremost, I really hope that readers are able to look at sex ed a little more clearly. It’s something I had very little sense of before I started the project, and of course, now I see it everywhere. I see the very present and real impact that it has on young people truly every day.
If it sparks action, that’s even better. I also think it reveals some genuinely interesting aspects of American history that hadn’t quite become real to me, which I hope will speak to readers.
Margaret Grace Myers is a writer, an educator, and a book collector based in Maine. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Lady Science, and the Gotham Gazette, among other publications. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College and a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of The Fight for Sex Ed.
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