Book review: Touchy Subject: The History and Philosophy of Sex Education

“Touchy Subject: The History and Philosophy of Sex Education” (Bialystok and Andersen, 2022) offers an ambitious dual-disciplinary examination of the entangled history and ethics undergirding classroom sex education in America. Spanning over a century, historian Lisa Andersen provides rich empirical analysis tracing shifts in the purpose and politics surrounding sex education from the late 19th century through 2000. Philosopher Lauren Bialystok carefully elucidates the layered conceptual fault lines sustaining conflict into the present, delineating zones of reasonable disagreement to enable progress.

Andersen’s early chapters vividly illustrate how the expansion of public schooling in the late 1800s...