The Role of Male Educators and the Challenges in Sexuality Education

Abstract

Sex education is an educational curriculum area that represents a challenge for teachers, mainly if they are men. Therefore, the present study was carried out to identify the difficulties that male teachers face when addressing sex education with their students. It seeks to broaden the subject's understanding comprehensively and reflect on it in several dimensions, considering the actors involved: The State, the school, the role of teachers, and parents. A qualitative methodology was used, with a comprehensive-interpretive approach. Four public elementary teachers from the city of Veracruz, Mexico, participated. The instrument we used was a semi-structured interview. The findings were as follows: regarding their role as an educator, they consider that it is up to them to inform students on a scientific basis about sexuality; regarding their role in sex education, they think that they have the responsibility of reinforcing in the classroom the education that parents give their children at home. The challenges refer to the claims they receive from parents for talking about sexuality with kids and the lack of precision and depth in the content of the free textbooks regarding the matter. Finally, we conclude that sex education is a joint work in which the institutions' functions, both educational and family, are interrelated.