ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the conflicting understandings of childhood sexuality which underlie current approaches to sex education. It examines how the conceptual problematisation of child sexuality gives rise to two contradictory programmes for sex education — a health programme and an education programme. Sexual innocence has been a key component of romantic or ideal notions of childhood since the seventeenth century. The education programme emphasises traditional moral values. It seeks to protect the 'natural' status of the child as non-sexual. The National Curriculum was introduced by the Education Reform Act 1988. Sex education within the National Curriculum is contained in the biology section of the science curriculum. The legal position regarding advice to individual pupils outside the classroom is not clear. This aspect of sex education is not referred to directly by statute, nor has the issue been brought before the courts. Advice from health professionals, restricted to a minority of pupils, is associated with illness, illegality, and immorality.
