esexuality- (what) are there limits to an assemblage of networked sexuality education?

Deborah Britzman notes that ‘in order to move past [hierarchy of identities supported by schools], teachers must learn to see schooling as a place to question, explore, and seek alternative explanations rather than as a place where knowledge means “certainty, authority, and stability” (2000:51). But is this too much to ask of schooling, when it means transforming hostile and oppressive environments, for this paper in terms of sexuality education? Despite governmental mandates, there exists little consistency, education or guidance for teachers in schools to teach sexuality education (SE) but when there is (eg Australia, AotearoaNew Zealand, Canada) there is anything but what Britzman hopes for. One form of SE facilitated in schools is abstinence-only, ineffective in preventing adolescent pregnancy and in delaying onset of sexual intercourse. In contrast, comprehensive SE has increased student sexual knowledge and understanding while not increasing sexual behaviour; effective methods including reaction papers, tasteful humour, group discussions, and viewing erotic-based educational and entertainment media. This curriculum appears more complete than students’ previous ways of learning about sex from peers, parents, media, or online. The third and most prevalent form of SE is silence where topics such as sexual activity, practices, identities and attitudes, remain ‘steeped in conceptions of moral purity and pollution’ (Tupper 2014, 155), difficult for educators to navigate within school climates. School spaces, invested in regulatory systems of power, enforce gender and sexual conformity, educators contributing to the (re)production of these systems, marginalising gender and sexual diversity, regulation produced through ‘mundane and day-to-day processes and practices’ (Youdell 2006, 13). Anti-queer bullying is prevalent, teachers and students both complicit (Kosciw et al. 2011), teachers facing significant barriers in addressing homophobic or heterosexist bullying. While some countries such as the USA is limited in comprehensive SE, other countries frame sexual health as an issue of physical, mental and social wellbeing but still have significant numbers of students receiving insufficient SE, looking for information elsewhere. A lack of education, support and clear direction in curriculum implementation and tackling controversial topics fuels teachers’ anxieties about teaching SE, from making mistakes, angering or upsetting parents and students, job security, and media backlash. Drawing on digital sources this theoretical paper takes stock of limits and affordances to propose a more radical testing of the limits of SE. Doxic practices to desexualize, gender dichotomize, cis­norm, and morally 'clean' young people via repro­biologized SE or an absence of quality schooling associated with sexualities, diversity and health in gender/sexualities seems nearly unintelligible. I argue that the precarious and limited set of SE plateaus require challenge and illustrate these through snapshots designed to test the limits of possibility asking whose limits they are and why.