This communication aims to undertake, under the pragmatic sociology framework, an approach to sex education in school as a means of preventing risk behaviors among adolescents and youngsters by encouraging the use of "best practices" (Pétry, 2011). The recommendations given in law Nº 60/2009 which turns mandatory sex education in schools seeks to establish a culture of protection among children, adolescents and youngsters, aiming to improve their affective-sexual relationships, reducing the possible negative consequences of sexual risk behaviors, such as unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
These measures are the product of a social trend in contemporary society: risk prevention, the logic of quality and the promotion of the students’ right to experience school in a safe environment (Chateudernay & Torny, 1999). How do these standards have influence on scenarios and educational practices for sexuality? The recommendations of "best practices" are not, strictly speaking, a set of specific rules or protocols, but a set of general recommendations leading to multiple interpretations in its practical application.
These recommendations do not have a fully binding sense, being necessary to examine closely the work done in schools. What is the impact of these standards on the daily work of teachers and how can they keep the education and protection of children, adolescents and youngsters? According to Chateudernay at al., under the pretext of risk prevention, it may be imminent an automatic passage from the registration of policies of prevention policies to policies of surveillance and control (2013).
The way students self-regulate and experience their bodies in the relationships they establish with their peers, but also in their relationships with their teachers, contributes to a greater visibility of the conflicts that occur within the interactive frameworks between one another. The guiding principles for sex education have higher expression in the self-care or in the bodies surveillance?
Risk behaviors are characteristic of an “age of experimenting” where the search of limits and the desire to experiment lead these behaviors among youth (Breviglieri, 2009). The risk in contemporary society holds an ambivalent meaning – if, on one hand, it encourages young people to take risks, to confront the future under the sign of initiative, as a contribution to personal and professional success; on the other, it is asked extreme caution in every decision when that risk involves negative consequences which can result in acts of discrimination and violence, unwanted pregnancy, diseases or death.
The recommendations of good educational practices do not prescribe answers, but encourage the development of strategies to deal with risk issues of sexual nature in schools. Being this is a reflection on the fundamental role that education meets (or not) in building a more responsible and healthy society, set of questions it stands out a: what sex education brings to school and to the pedagogical actions produced in plural situations and school contexts? How can sex education be at the service of the decrease in sexual risk among adolescents and youngsters?
What are the effects on the practices and on the construction of meaning in interventions from teachers/educators or from other figures responsible for sex education? And finally, how students appropriate (or not) the approaches to sex education that encourages them to avoid risk behaviors? The answer to these questions is immediately receptive to the involvement of duty, responsibility and solidarity, to the concerns regarding the self and the other and to the ideals of "living well together" at stake in the collective actions (Boltanski and Tévenot, 1991; Pharo, 2007).
