The Sexual Politics of the Curriculum: contesting values

This paper arises out of our current work investigating the construction of male and female students’ sexual/gender relations within school arenas. A main concern is to explore recent empirical and theoretical work on sexuality, in an attempt to critique the New Right moralism with its own contradictory form of pluralism. At the same time a critical examination of the sexual politics of the curriculum may serve to rethink the underlying values of the old dichotomies around liberal and radical modes of progressive education with reference to curriculum change. Key areas of debate include the contextualisation of sex/sexuality within schools, sexual harassment, the normalisation of heterosexualities and sex/sexuality education. We have found it useful to hold onto the tension between materialist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of the formation of sexual subjectivities, without attempting to resolve the contradictions between them.