‘Pleasurable Pedagogy’: Young People’s Thoughts about Including ‘Pleasure’ in Sexuality Education

Abstract

This chapter addresses debate about the ‘missing discourse of desire’ (Fine, 1988) in sexuality education by examining young people’s ideas around incorporating ‘pleasure’ in programmes. There has been burgeoning interest in the possibility of including discussions of desire and pleasure within school sexuality education since Michelle Fine’s seminal publication in this area (Allen, 2004a; Hirst, 2007; Ingham, 2005b; Kehily, 2002b; Kiely, 2005; Rasmussen, Rofes and Talburt, 2004; Tolman, 2002). In this chapter, I explore young people’s investment and interest in including pleasure within sexuality education in New Zealand. These views are analysed for the insights they offer about how such content might successfully form part of programmes. An important feature of this discussion is that these ideas represent the views of young people themselves. Until now, debates about the inclusion of pleasure in programmes have been largely adult- defined at the level of policy, public debate and within academic discussion (Alldred and David, 2007; Evans, 2006; Measor, 2004).