A Sexual Education

Jul 7, 2010
Joe Carter

Unless the middle school in Shenandoah, Iowa, is training junior gynecologists, it is unclear why its eighth-graders need to be taught how to perform female exams and to put a condom on a 3-D, anatomically correct male sex organ.

The representative from Planned Parenthood, which provided the instruction, justified the curriculum by saying, “All information we use is medically accurate and science based.” For them, sexual education can be denuded of all moral content as long as research studies and reams of statistics back up their claims.

The advocates of “comprehensive sex education” want teenagers to “just wear a condom.” Planned Parenthood’s amoral appeal to “science” shows why that fails: medically accurate and science-based information doesn’t give children any idea how to use that information, while it makes them think they can do what they want if only they practice the “safe sex” techniques they’ve been taught. But I don’t think the abstinence advocates’ “Just say no” is always an improvement.

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. the rest

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.