Configurações de conhecimento e política na regulação da educação sexual em meio escolar

Abstract

In the last twenty-five years, the intervention of public authorities in the field of sexual education in schools has materialized through diverse modalities – by legislative acts, by the creation of programs, networks, working groups, as well by the production of texts aimed to coordinate, guide and support action among schoolchildren. This paper aims to describe and analyse the knowledge that support this public policy, as well as the governance practices that are associated with the mobilization and generation of such knowledge. In the first part the text draws a picture of the variety of knowledge that is brought together in the intervention of public authority, whether in problematization and elaboration of action plans. The second part of the paper gives attention to three controversies repeatedly present in public debates – the existence (or not) of sexual education in schools, the visions about youth sexuality and the ways it should be accomplished, and the hierarchy of knowledge generated in the education and health sectors. As in its first part, the text presents an interpretive analysis about the knowledge’s that are perceived, by actors, as relevant to coordinate and to provide sexual education in schools – what are those knowledge’s, from where do they come from, and how should they be combined.