Behavior: Grant v. Lee

All children whose parents Never Told Them grow up to be authorities on sex education. Well, Mary Breasted's mother tried. She said something in the kitchen once about a "rosy glow." The years passed, and Mary saw a bit of life. She spent two years as a VISTA volunteer in Spanish Harlem. She —wow!—even went to Radcliffe. By her 26th year she had become one of those bright reporters on the Village Voice, and she had reached a decision: Mother's little touch of poetry about the rosy glow was something less than enough. Sex education had become Now, and manifestly it was a Village Voicer's worthy cause.

Armed with her bias, a tape recorder and what was to prove to be a subversive sense of humor, Mary set out for the war zone of sex education—Anaheim, Calif. Somewhere in the Neverland of Orange County, trapped by flak from every side, Mary grew up. She got her education not only in sex but in the politics of the public schools and in the slightly mad ways Americans define and propagandize their moral values.

The result, Oh! Sex Education! (Praeger; $7.95), is a small journalistic masterpiece of rueful perception. With her first book, Mary Breasted takes her place among the Joan Didions, Gloria Steinems, Gail Sheehys—the journalists of grace-note disillusionment, all those sharp young women who look at their fellow Americans with the sad-eyed vision of little girls whose dolls were broken at an early age.

In the shadow of the Disneyland Matterhorn, Mary slipped out her tape recorder and notebooks and listened while the Anaheim Pros and Antis talked. And talked! In 1969, the pioneering Family Life and Sex Education Program, which Anaheim had introduced into its schools, was the major local topic.

FLSE, as it was known, consisted of an ungraded 41-week session, beginning in seventh grade and running through the twelfth. The facts of reproduction, pregnancy and birth were progressively detailed. But in Mary Breasted's opinion, "the emphasis of the seventh-grade sessions was placed on youngsters' social problems," while even "twelfth graders would learn more about the problems of raising a family than they would about sexual intercourse." Nevertheless, the Antis saw it as the evil of all evils —a Communist plot to brainwash pure-minded America. Atheism, rock 'n' roll, even the U.K. were minor perils beside sex education. It was "programmed perversion," condoning homosexuality, endorsing masturbation—a sneaky death blow at the heart of America: the Family. The Pros, on the other hand, saw the experiment as education at the point of salvation. "Stamp Out Neurosis" was the invisible banner every Pro waved. Sex education promised to free America from its puritan hang-ups—and about time, too!

Mary Breasted left the battlefields of Anaheim with an ear-buzzing sense of overkill. Everybody was talking, but nobody was listening. It was just as if two tape recorders were shouting at each other. The futility of the polarized and polished dialogue made her recall the words of H.L. Mencken: "Did Luther convert Leo X? Did Grant convert Lee?" The missionaries were playing cannibals.