The implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education and social reproduction. Contributions from an ethnography in an artistic middle school

Abstract

I intend to analyze the connections between paid and unpaid reproductive labor in the school environment, through the representations and teaching practices around the implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). To do this, I retrieve the findings of an ethnographic research developed in a public artistic middle school in the city of Buenos Aires during the years 2019 and 2020. Through semi-structured anthropological interviews with teachers, and instances of participant observation in classes and special events, I seek to intertwine, from an ethnographic approach, the experiences of implementation of CSE with the theoretical discussions about social reproduction. Since teaching is a feminized labor, I found that although CFE Resolution No. 340/18 proposes the creation of a team of CSE teachers for each educational institution, this implies an overload of responsibilities that are not paid and that is usually assumed by females. CSE is then understood as part of the tasks of social reproduction and “the feminine”, replicating those ideas that understand the school as a second home and the teacher as a second mother.