Sexuality Education in Public Schools in Australia and Aotearoa New Zeeland

Sexuality Education in Public Schools in Australia and Aotearoa New Zeeland

Because the secular is so much part of our modern life, it is not easy to grasp it directly. (Asad, 2003: 16) A particular focus of this chapter is public schools in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand, drawing on research on cultural and religious difference in sexuality education. Data was collected in four schools, two in each country. Our focus is on culturally and religiously diverse public schools because these are sites where young people from many backgrounds will necessarily come together, and there is no expectation that the curriculum will serve students from a particular group. In choosing this focus we also reasoned that attention to diversity should be a fundamental characteristic of sexuality education as many young people approach adulthood faced with conflicting and confusing messages about sexuality and gender (UNESCO, 2009). Our research illustrates that some young people did perceive conflict-or happy clashes-between the curriculum and what they understood about sexuality, as learned at home and in their peer groups, while other participants perceived the curriculum as in alignment with the values they learned at home. Altogether, our research indicates contemporary school-based sexuality education in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand fails to address effectively cultural and religious difference (Sanjakdar, 2009a; Jackson, 2004; Singh, 2001). This tendency to avoid questions of religion and culture in sexuality education is compounded in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand by perceived tensions that teachers and students feel are generated by conversations about cultural and religious diversity, particularly within the public sphere (Goldman, 2008; Rasmussen, Mitchell and Harwood, 2007). Failure to consider cultural and religious difference in sexuality education in public schools can result in a rejection of government initiatives in this area and ultimately reduce program effectiveness (Lidstone and Wilmett, 2008).

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