Finally, in Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education Before the 1960s (2008), Freeman uses sex education programs in Toms River, New Jersey and San Diego, California as the subjects of most of her analysis and points to the institute of education as the main educator of sex, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. She argues that coming of age in the mid-twentieth-century included for children to attend public schools to gain basic reading, writing, and math skills while also learning about social norms. These social norms include sex, gender, and sexuality that comes from both teachers and classmates as well. Social norms were learned in a multitude of settings within school which includes the playground, bathrooms, hallways, and with the various interactions students experience at their desks. Freeman notes how school policy was established to help channel and control behaviors that seemed deviant. …show more content…
Specifically, “Whereas early social hygienists had been involved with monitoring sexual behavior and controlling the spread of vice and disease, mid-century sex educators concentrated on shaping the minds and imaginations of young people, more so than their bodies.” The educators in the 1940s and 1950s were more concerned about the role the family played which was integrated into homemaking classes for girls. These classes attempted to provide guidance to create a successful and happy nuclear family. Freeman draws attention to the concerns of educators which included the youths’ attitudes toward sexuality, marriage, and family life. In other words, sex education was centered around the heterosexual schema about upholding the traditional fabrics of the “normal” family. Classrooms in the 1940s and 1950s integrated sex education in other classes and the term hygiene referred mostly to cleanliness rather than