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YA Lit and Sex Ed/ Sex in YA Lit and Engagement
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 09:44:07 -0600
Sue Bartle's link to a story about students in Alaska not having to take sex ed brings to mind several articles related to this topic. I believe the first may have been cited in an earlier post:
"The Secret Source" Sexually Explicit Young Adult Literature as an Information Source" by Amy Pattee (Young Adult Library Services, v 5 n 1
--Winter 2006), in which the author notes--among many things--that young adult books with explicit scenes can be used as information sources oto fill in sex education gaps, and allow readers to explore not just the sexual conduct but feelings associated with it.
And isn't that what many of us did when we were young, and many kids today still do? Books get passed from hand-to-hand, whether under the table or openly, with whispers about certain pages or scenes. They are scense that offer up titllation, perhaps, but more important scenes that are fulfilling readers' curiosity and need to understand, including, perhaps, curiosity about their own physical response to reading something sexually explicit.
As Emma Neale wrote in her defense of the Into the River? by Ted Dawe
(shared by Jane Thomsen yesterday): "literature is one of the places that young people can safely think through situations, and rehearse their moral choices, without the grave personal compromise that living through the real events might involve."
And then there is the engagement factor. Tanya Lee Stone talks about it in the article she mentioned she wrote, "Now and Forever : The Power of Sex in Young Adult LIterature" (VOYA v. 28 n. 6--February 2006). It's also the topic of "Literacy and Sexuality: What's the Connection?" by Catherine Ashcraft (Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy v 52 n. 7
-- April 2009). In Ashcroft's article, she argues that "to date, we remain reluctant to consider how literacy classrooms might harness the powerful poetntial of addressing connections between literacy and sexuality." She goes on to write,
"...the relational aspects of sexuality consistently interfere with teens' ability to make healthy sexual decisions, even when they have the clinical information they need. As such, discussions about these relational dynamics are at least as important as discussions about clinical information....This is particularly important for literacy educators--especially if we truly believe that identity is integral to youth's literacy development. We can no longer pretend that this conceptualiziation conveniently excludes sexuality identity."
She goes on to suggest that literacy classrooms consider how "addressing sexuality might benefit adolescents' literacy and academic development" by meeting them at genuine points of interest, and references a program that engaged students by meeting them at this point of interest, and in doing so the students "actively engaged in literacy proactices they had previously resisted."
Megan
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 09:44:07 -0600
Sue Bartle's link to a story about students in Alaska not having to take sex ed brings to mind several articles related to this topic. I believe the first may have been cited in an earlier post:
"The Secret Source" Sexually Explicit Young Adult Literature as an Information Source" by Amy Pattee (Young Adult Library Services, v 5 n 1
--Winter 2006), in which the author notes--among many things--that young adult books with explicit scenes can be used as information sources oto fill in sex education gaps, and allow readers to explore not just the sexual conduct but feelings associated with it.
And isn't that what many of us did when we were young, and many kids today still do? Books get passed from hand-to-hand, whether under the table or openly, with whispers about certain pages or scenes. They are scense that offer up titllation, perhaps, but more important scenes that are fulfilling readers' curiosity and need to understand, including, perhaps, curiosity about their own physical response to reading something sexually explicit.
As Emma Neale wrote in her defense of the Into the River? by Ted Dawe
(shared by Jane Thomsen yesterday): "literature is one of the places that young people can safely think through situations, and rehearse their moral choices, without the grave personal compromise that living through the real events might involve."
And then there is the engagement factor. Tanya Lee Stone talks about it in the article she mentioned she wrote, "Now and Forever : The Power of Sex in Young Adult LIterature" (VOYA v. 28 n. 6--February 2006). It's also the topic of "Literacy and Sexuality: What's the Connection?" by Catherine Ashcraft (Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy v 52 n. 7
-- April 2009). In Ashcroft's article, she argues that "to date, we remain reluctant to consider how literacy classrooms might harness the powerful poetntial of addressing connections between literacy and sexuality." She goes on to write,
"...the relational aspects of sexuality consistently interfere with teens' ability to make healthy sexual decisions, even when they have the clinical information they need. As such, discussions about these relational dynamics are at least as important as discussions about clinical information....This is particularly important for literacy educators--especially if we truly believe that identity is integral to youth's literacy development. We can no longer pretend that this conceptualiziation conveniently excludes sexuality identity."
She goes on to suggest that literacy classrooms consider how "addressing sexuality might benefit adolescents' literacy and academic development" by meeting them at genuine points of interest, and references a program that engaged students by meeting them at this point of interest, and in doing so the students "actively engaged in literacy proactices they had previously resisted."
Megan
--
Megan Schliesman, Librarian
Cooperative Children's Book Center
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
600 N. Park Street, Room 4290
Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503
schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
My regular hours are T-F, 8-4:30.
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Received on Thu 06 Mar 2014 09:44:29 AM CST
