What's the real deal about masculinity?: Evaluation findings and student performances from social studies-based sex education

At best, American public school sex education typically focuses on the “birds and the bees” or on highly individualistic models of decision-making. Absent is attention to the centrality of race, gender, and poverty in young people's sexual lives. Inspired by its West African predecessor, Scenarios from the Sahel, one innovative nonprofit organization, Scenarios USA has turned that paradigm on its head with a high school curriculum (supported by teacher workshops) and writing contest that place emphasis on fostering students' critical thinking skills, on their analyzing their social context, and on giving voice to their own stories and experiences. This presentation will be based on a rigorous qualitative and quantitative evaluation--including survey data, classroom observations, and teacher interviews--in Cleveland, OH, where both teachers and students were grappling with a curriculum that posed the question “What's the Real Deal about Masculinity?” The survey, filled out before and after the intervention, documents the effects of the program on students' masculine ideology. The classroom observations and teacher interviews analyzed the ways that – in classrooms of largely Black youth from low-income families – the curriculum surfaced larger questions of power in society – between white/black, male/female, straight/gay, and (as a function of former) teacher/student. Findings from student and teacher surveys, classroom observations, and teacher interviews provide strong support for an intersectional, social studies approach to sex education. The scholarly presentations are interspersed with moving performances that students wrote as part of this program and the screening of a short film.