Abstract:
Within the Pacific, sexuality education is influenced by many different multi-national organisations and is rarely contextualised to the local setting, often stemming from western ideas of what is required (Puamau, 2006). This paper considers the possibility thinking (Craft, Cremin, Burnard, Dragovic & Chappell, 2013) of young people in the Cook Islands (a small island nation in the middle of the South Pacific) who, through their stories, imagine the sexuality education they would like to participate in. Drawing on six focus groups with young people aged between 15 and 24 years of age, living in the Cook Islands, the paper analyses their voices and stories that speak of the gendered realities of their lives and demonstrates the impact of legends, dreams, hopes, desires along with a cell phone in their pocket. The paper then considers what this may mean for sexuality and relationship education in the Cook Islands. In particular, I discuss the tension between the discourses between the current sexuality education provided where Non Government Organisations and schools ‘tap and gap’ - providing a one off lecture that is supposed to impact on the behaviours of young people – and the possibility thinking done by youth that imagines a different type of sexuality education that is more relevant and meaningful to their desire for positive intimate relationships. This paper, adds to the call that sexuality education needs to provide spaces for young people to have agency in voicing their desired learning needs (Meason, Tiffin & Miller, 2000). In so doing, ensuring that sexuality and relationship education policy, programmes and practices in the Pacific are pertinent and applicable to the needs of those it is intended for and that which meld traditional beliefs with contemporary global, and local, ideas if it is applicable (Nabobo-Baba, 2006; Puamau, 2006).