Teleology, Modesty and Sex Education
Joe Carter, the web editor at First Things, has an interesting take on sex education.
His argument is that neither the Planned Parenthood approach–recently in the news for teaching middle-schoolers in Iowa how to perform female exams–nor the just-say-no crowd is actually educating kids:
Both types of programs are equally flawed and flawed in the same way. Each indoctrinates the children in a particular viewpoint and tries to inoculate them against the negative results of sexual behavior. Neither school of sex educators is primarily concerned with providing an education.
Instead, he says:
For a program to be truly educational, it must teach critical moral reasoning—an element curiously missing from both approaches. Before they learn the best techniques for conducing pap smears and putting on condoms, children must be taught teleology, values clarification, and information acquisition. A program must not impose views implicitly through slogans, no matter how good the advice the slogans provide.
Teenagers, Carter says, need to be taught the teleology of sex. Before they go any further in a discussion of sex, he says, they need to know what its purpose is:
Is sex mainly for pleasure? For bonding? For procreation? For all three, and if so in what proportion? Which is primary? Is sex a gift from a benevolent Creator or merely blind evolution’s way of tricking us into passing on our genetic material?
Carter call this values clarification, but I don’t think he means the values clarification that has been promoted by some educators and that acts to separate kids from the belief systems of their parents. That version of values clarification is based on the idea that there is no right and wrong and that it doesn’t really matter what you believe because there are no absolute values. The content of your belief is not important. Back in the 1970s and 1980s there were a number of values clarification books for teachers. The most influential one was probably Values Clarification: A Handbook of Practical Strategies for Teachers and Students by Sidney Simon et al. I like to think it’s out of fashion in schools now, but I’m afraid that’s wishful thinking.
Carter means something else by values clarification:
It should also show them how their behavior fits into a broader moral universe that involves more than just them, their paramour, and their hormones.
Simon’s values clarification is based on the idea that even young kids are autonomous agents who should not be consigned to taking part in their parents’ comprehensive belief systems. Carter, on the other hand, says the opposite:
They should not be taught to think of themselves as moral free agents.
In other words, they should be encouraged to acknowledge the view of their parents and churches and consider how it affects their decisions. They should be allowed to explore how their beliefs (religious or secular) affect their views of abortion, contraception, and homosexuality. Rather than being pushed into debating such controversies, they should be taught how to translate these beliefs into behavior that is consistent with their understanding of the purposes of sexuality and their value systems.
Carter also argues that school kids should have some say in just how much information they get.
When such education is provided in a public schools (and it is usually mandatory), students must have the freedom to decide for themselves how much information they want. Our culture will force them to become unduly familiar with a broad range of salacious concepts and practices. But teenagers should not be forced to learn more about such extraneous sexual topics than they want to know.
Why should a modest young woman or young man be forced to learn how to put on a condom or be exposed to intimate details about homosexual practices? Modesty is not a vice and should not be treated as one.
Carter acknowledges that much of what he’s proposing can’t and shouldn’t take place in public schools.
I’m not convinced that his argument that kids must be taught how to get information about sex is practical. He says, for instance, that in the process seeking information kids should be taught that “there is much knowledge that they do not need to have.” How will they know which is which while they’re looking?
I’m a big fan of asking and trying to answer the Big Questions. And there’s definitely a time when the questions Carter suggests need to be thought about. I’m just not so sure that middle-schoolers are ready to take a crack at it. In the meantime, let’s stick with “Just Say No.”
