Sex, Pregnancy, and Schooling: Obstacles to a Critical Teaching of the Body

Abstract

This paper focuses on how a pedagogy of the body is not facilitated in schools. An examination of the contemporary dilemma of teenage pregnancy at one school site maps the obstacles that prevent a critical teaching of the body in one historical and situational moment. Teachers presented information to students in a cloak of protectionism that was designed to shield students from stress or harsh realities but in effect promoted disinformation to students. Teachers' relationships with administrators and school boards circumscribed their abilities to critically teach a pedagogy of the body. As a result, teachers as subjects of domination were often deceived through an identity of professionalism that concealed their vulnerability to the political implications of their teaching. Finally, the author suggests that a critical teaching of issues of the body requires a vision much larger than one that is focused on a classroom or a school. Such teaching requires a vigilance in questioning all assaults on the sexual and reproductive rights of students while attending to the sexual politics of conservative agendas that are purported to be for “a student's own good.”