Beyond the Birds and the Bees:
Sexual Education in the 20th Century
April 9 – September 19, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
Monday – Friday, 2 – 5 p.m.
In spring 2008, students in Brown University‘s public humanities masters program unveiled an exhibit on the history of sex education. The exhibit explored how Americans have learned about sex over the last 100 years. It examined five places teenagers learn about sex: in the military and schools, from parents and friends, and through popular culture.
“This exhibit takes a sophisticated approach to analyzing the history of sex ed. It’s not just about curriculum or policy,” said Steven Lubar, director of the John Nicholas Brown Center. “It acknowledges both the official and unofficial ways that young people learn about sex, and considers the ways that sex education has changed over the course of the last century, and why.”
The exhibit featured
A military barracks during World War I, when the army worried mostly about avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases;
A bedroom from the 1960s, where learning might have involved parents, books, magazines, or friends;
A basement hangout from the 1990s, where kids learned about sex from TV, popular music, and magazines; and
A classroom from the early twenty first century, a place to examine current debates about controversial topics including abstinence-only education and whether sex education should even be taught outside the home.
The last part of the exhibit was a resource and feedback area. Curators built a resource room to support the exhibit with up-to-date books, magazines, pamphlets, and Web links on public and personal health and current curricula. The feedback area provided a place for visitors to respond to the exhibit.
Co-sponsors: Brown University Department of Education; Graduate Student Council; Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women; Sarah Doyle Women’s Center Taubman Center for Public Policy & American Institutions
panel discussion
April 15, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Panelists
Steven Cohen, executive director, Rhode Island Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance; teacher, Classical High School
Kristina Diamond, director of public relations and community affairs, Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island
Patricia Flanagan, Rhode Island Teen Pregnancy Coalition
Leah Nahmias moderator, master’s student, public humanities program, Brown University
This panel will discussed the current battles, in Rhode Island and nationally, over what students should learn about sex, and what sexual education materials are appropriate and responsible. Panelists explored how national debates about the use of abstinence-only sexual education materials have played out in Rhode Island, and delved into the future of sexual education in Rhode Island.
April 23, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Megan Andelloux, Miko Exotic Wear
Andelloux acts out, explains, and demystifies what preteens and teenagers really ask, really know, and really do in a sex ed classroom. A veteran sex educator, Andelloux worked for nine years teaching sex in classrooms in New Jersey and Connecticut, moving on to Planned Parenthood and finally, Providence’s “Friendly Neighborhood Sex Shop,” Miko.
keynote speaker
Co-founder, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective; Faculty, Harvard School of Public Health; Co-author, Our Bodies, Ourselves
May 1, 2008
Smith-Buonanno Hall
Room 106, Pembroke Campus, Brown University
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Norma Swenson, adjunct lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, spoke about her experience as co-founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and co-author of the book, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Swenson has four decades of experience teaching about sexuality.
Visitors to the exhibition were asked to fill out a questionnaire on how they learned about the birds and the bees.
This section of the exhibition focused on how sex education was discussed within the home during the 1950s and 1960s.
Boys and girls received information about sex in different ways and were surrounded by different cultural cues, from letterman jackets to Barbies.
As part of the exhibition process, students worked with graphic and exhibit designer, Erin Wells, to create a look for the show and its companion materials.