J. Mark Halstead and Michael J. Reiss. London and New York, Routledge Falmer, 2003.Pp. 230.Hbk. £70.00. Pbk. £18.99. This book by Mark Halstead and Michael Reiss is aimed, as stated on its back cover, at teachers and professionals involved in sex education, whether teachers of personal and social education, form tutors, school nurses, health workers or academics. It seeks to provide a serious investigation of the place of values in sex education and to explore the implications of these values for planning and practice. The first half of the book examines which values might be considered as central to sex education, and the second half considers aims and frameworks for school sex education. Halstead and Reiss provide a rich diet of suggestions relating to what a school sex-education programme that has values at its heart might look like. Their overall point seems to be that: ‘Unless we can help young people to understand human values in relation to sexuality, people may increasingly attempt to measure sexual fulfilment in terms of quantifiable experiences rather than in terms of fundamental and mutual human enrichment’ (p. 203).
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A 2005 study studied this question.