sex education writers strike

sex education writers strike

Navigating the Impact of Sex Education Writers Strike: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to Sex Education Writers Strike

We open by examining the first months of the strike: What responses did it generate, and what kinds of inquiries surfaced as we were collectively coming to terms with its significance? Sex education’s writers’ strike was essentially a dual protest: editorial boards, commentators, sex bloggers, and ‘general well-adjudicators of who is Doing Good Sex Ed’ were asked to refrain from launching new content creations or giving promotional space to the strike cohort’s former content until further notice. Of equal urgency is the question of why, at the exact moment that more pivotal support for the narrative is being discussed and strategized on both sides, critiques of the strike are only now surfacing again, after the volume of critical business writing and personal essays has recently started to taper off.

In January 2021, we embarked on a journey to better understand the impact of the writers’ strike on the discourse and praxis of sex education. The following chapters bring to you some of the brilliant insights we gathered from our colleagues and friends. Since then, we have remained an #UnstrikingZone, asking questions and co-creating communities instead of publications. It is our deepest hope that this work does justice to the brains, ruminations, intellections, cogitations, ponderings, excogitations, deliberations, lugubrations, meditations, reflections, brown studies, and ratiocinations of everyone who engaged with us – whether in person, over email, on the phone, via Twitter, or by exchanging Snapchats and TikToks in the smaller meetings thus convened.

2. Historical Context of Sex Education Curriculum

The above historical considerations attempt only to provide a view of the contemporary curriculum by piecing together critical policy landmarks as they emerged. The view captures an unchangeable historicity in the modus operandi of school curriculum development over time. Achieving this historically based explanation puts the contemporary “crisis” of the “sudden” Writers Strike in context whose roots reach the shore of our curriculum history.

In order to gauge the true impact of a writers’ strike, it is crucial to briefly delve into the historical development of the sex education curriculum in order to understand what shaped it. The first truly groundbreaking piece of legislation was the Health Amendment Act 1947, which saw the gradual establishment of a comprehensive sex education program that stressed physiological, biological, and psychological aspects of growth and kept in line the moral and ethical considerations of family and responsible parenthood. Therapy in the community aided by professional counselors became the main policy to tackle venereal diseases. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Society for the Provision of Social Services (SPROTS), the Moses Kotane Labour College, and organizations such as Planned Parenthood Association created through sexual reproduction training programs grew to incorporate a wider and more assertively political agenda in their services and materials. The mid-1980s saw the rise of an infectious disease of terrifying proportions, which released a set of public and private anxieties that formed the emergence of, and debates around, AIDS, with the issue of treating AIDS sufferers and others raised questions about the effectiveness of current sexual ethics. Today, sex education remains with sexual health, implemented in schools, local education authorities, and instructed by teachers and both professional and specially trained health workers, and makes explicit mention of an ethical concern for young people’s sexual behavior and a desire to teach them the proper process for acquiring sexual health, which is now a right as noted in numerous current legislation and local education authority reports. As such, any changes made to public and private procedures should not be seen independently at the expense of understanding age-old policy devices as part of the complicated mess that constitutes modern South Africa’s curriculum.

3. Challenges and Opportunities in Sex Education Delivery

The content that a community or a nation includes in their sexuality education curriculum, researchers support experience-based education, which reveals the need for flexibility, creativity in the pedagogy and content, and age-appropriateness for sex education. After examining the current state of sex education delivery, we can see that it is contextual and must be implemented in an environment that is subject to a number of intersecting socio-economic, political, religious, and cultural challenges that can either increase the stigma against sex and sexual education or decrease it. Thus, although sex education can improve human health and, by extension, the welfare of society, the general environment conducive to both traditional values and sexual education can facilitate or complicate sex education delivery. Thus, its proponents and its obstacles, youth and others, are present in the environment and must be considered when attempting to deliver and assess the effectiveness of sex education curricula in different environments. Given these challenges, it is possible to recommend that those writing sex education curricula need to be flexible and creative in the process.

Sex education is a complex yet fundamental aspect of personal development, which is supposed to be inclusive, comprehensive, and up to date. To achieve this, writers must navigate a number of diverse topics and controversies, including but not limited to the components of what and how of the teaching, who should get to decide what is taught, and when, how, and by whom it should be taught. A number of authors have problematized sex education for how traditional and non-traditional values, inter and intranational stigmatization, and resource limitations make comprehensive and inclusive sex education difficult to achieve. For example, some have suggested that stigma against sex in general and against particular sexual identities are a stumbling block for comprehensive sex education. Moreover, it is still a taboo subject, and misconceptions and ideological oppositions, as well as difficulties of implementation are the main barriers to teaching comprehensive sex education. On the contrary, some authors have devised creative ways to overcome these barriers, including using youth comics as a platform to promote sexual health and change thinking about sex. There is no single solution to address these challenges with sex education.

3. Challenges and Opportunities in Sex Education Delivery

Navigating the Impact of Sex Education Writers Strike: A Comprehensive Analysis

4. Implications of the Writers Strike on Sex Education Policies

The writers strike, in conjunction with the elite cadres of governmental and non-governmental organization (NGO) education decision makers, may culminate in ‘self-fulfilling policy effects’. The strike has influenced multiple policy process functions at various levels. Today, our ability to provide a path forward in ending the writers strike is limited because of the lack of data surrounding the event’s multiple implications. While bridging this divide, it is, at the same time, important to underscore that a single focus on ending the strike situation may belie the various cascading implications of this inter-agential dispute. More than this, we must remind ourselves that this event, in isolation, serves as a vivid example of how/where/how far we allow strikers, and those facing strike conditions, to push policy and its participants into making decisions in schools. We urge policymakers and scholars to become more thoughtful, prepared, and, at the same time, cautious of the policy implications of this strike now and in the future.

The ongoing writers strike in sex education has led to the absence of integrated information about the influence of the strike. This absence is particularly noteworthy given the cacophony of voices regarding the strike that makes it particularly difficult to identify a path forward for sex education in schools. However, the strike has broader implications for the policy process by influencing policymaking across multiple subsystems.

5. Strategies for Addressing the Gap in Sex Education Content

Collaborations between sex education professionals and writers, support centers, and researchers might offer sex education content exposure and disclosure mechanisms for the content that was in the process of being made right before the strike began. They might also offer insight into areas that have historically been ignored. Finally, local educational professionals and support workers might want to encourage any sex ed content-sharing websites to post overt consent and relationship activity guides and facilitator resources, if possible, as a means of amplifying opportunities to offer content that counts as sex education instruction (in appearance at least). Although, ultimately, such strategies would still require a fair amount of work and effort, quickness, and a whole lot of motivation and initiative. No one of these strategies might be feasible for all. But, together, they might help to fill the gap caused by the sex education writers on strike.

Addressing the gap in sex education content Stakeholders – including different governmental and non-governmental organizations and support groups – might want to consider advocating for alterations to curriculum standards and laws in their countries in order to offset the impact that might be felt in sex education resources following the sex education writers strike. For those educators who are utilizing the sex education content at this time (or may in the future), considering incorporating overt consent- and relationship-based activities, discussions, and non-curricular resources into classroom settings. Talks might also be given as well as some extra credit opportunities as potential incentives for drawing students to them. Educators and support workers could help arrange talks that civil society groups, researchers, and students would give to give research updates discussing topics such as sex education programming.