Risqué Education..

...Is kind of an oxymoron!

NTUSU Tribune

Opinions - April 2011

In early March, a live sex demonstration in an optional after class session of a ‘Human Sexuality’ course at Northwestern University sparked outrage and controversy that spread far and wide across the World Wide Web. Professor John Michael Bailey intended this optional session to be a discussion with members of a “Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism”, or BDSM group about fetishes and sex toys. However, it evolved into a live sex demonstration involving a naked woman and a sex toy.

A fair number of undergraduates would have taken a course in which a provocative video clip or two was shown by the instructor in the context of the course. This means that there is certainly some leeway instructors have with regards to what content they choose to include in their teaching material. So at what point though does something become too provocative or sexual to be employed in a class setting as a teaching aid? How far is too far when it coming to teaching?

There is certainly no distinct line between what is appropriate in the classroom and what is not. However, you know you’re crossed the line into the inappropriate category when one couldn’t distinguish between a pornographic clip and a recorded undergraduate class when both are put on mute! Criticism directed at Professor Bailey clearly goes to show that the majority thinks that it was a bad judgement call to allow a live demonstration during the optional class. The queer thing is that all of this criticism is backed purely by moral edicts and emotions. There isn’t one concrete reason that anyone has given in support of their stance. That got me thinking, why does everybody think that live sexual demonstrations absolutely do not have a place in the classroom?

The crux of the issue is really convention and societal norms. Sexual activity has always been something that belongs behind closed doors. It’s the skeleton in the closet that occupies the closets of an extremely large percentage of the world’s population. Live sex acts in non-educational settings create a fair amount of controversy, so one would only expect a lot more controversy when the act moves to a classroom setting. While proponents may argue that there may be some academic value behind all the controversy, frankly, I don’t think teenage minds are capable of distilling academic value from a live sex act! Therein lays the real reason why Professor Bailey should have declined permission for the demonstration of a sexual act in front of his class.

It is most certainly true that exposure to explicit content is a part college life to at least some extent for most undergraduates. However, for a teenage mind there is not much academic value associated with such content. After this controversy it’s fairly clear that no other academic will dare to venture into the murky waters that Professor Bailey ventured into earlier this month. That’s not to say that live sexual acts will disappear from student lives, but it’s probably for the better that they will disappear from classrooms.