Thesis (MEd)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / The problem of youth has been a key issue in South Africa since 1994, with youth
seen as needing extra guidance and leadership if they are to bring about the country
that many hope for. The interest in youth is also spurred on by recent studies that
claim that once adolescents establish certain behavioural patterns that it becomes
difficult to modify these patterns.
Little research exists that describes the ordinary sociological experiences of youth,
especially on sensitive issues that attract a lot of public attention- such as teenage
sex and pregnancies, and what is perceived as the ‘slipping of youth morals’. There
is great concern that youth are experimenting with sex at too early an age in their
social and political development (Frimpong 2010: 27).
In my thesis I focus on the thinking, choices and decisions that learners at one high
school in Cape Town seem to make with regard to sex and sexuality, and how their
choices seem to be influenced by a variety of discourses attached to the provision of
a sex education programme at the school; discourses that organise their everyday
thinking and actions in very concrete ways.
A key goal of the study was to disarticulate and re-articulate the deficit mentality that
shapes discourses of sexuality in South Africa, and to develop ‘sexual’ stories and
strategies of story-telling that allow the voices of learners to be heard (Pillow 2004).
My focus in this study is mainly to explore how the sex education programme
reconstitutes youth’s sexual identity. In my qualitative study I challenge the tendency
to view youth participation in teen sex using mainly an abstinence-only discourse,
and suggest that sex education programmes ‘contaminate’ and ‘mutilate’ youth
understandings of sex and sexuality in quite complex ways.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/85571 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Jefthas, Wilna Desiree |
| Contributors | Badroodien, A., Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 v. (unpaged |
| Rights | Stellenbosch University |
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