The argument in favor of sex education in schools claims that by introducing sexuality to students, they are helping create individuals who are sexually responsible as well as aware of health issues related to sex, such as the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. However, the problem with the argument is that sex education in schools is essentially value-neutral: they are trying to provide a value and ethically centered teaching of sexuality, but cannot satisfy this goal since the education system must be sensitive to diversity and differing morals and ethical traditions. Because of this sex education merely instead encourages sexuality among students, introducing them to sex but without an ethical and moral dimension.
Sex education without ethics, in other words, is merely the promotion of sex. Since “school sex education tends to be neutral” (Cox & Demmitt, 173) this means that there is no “value framework that can help children make sexual decisions and establish a set of ethics about their own sexual behavior.” (Cox & Demmitt, 173) The school system does not want to take ethical stands on sexuality and without this moral compass they merely produce a course on “reproductive plumbing”, (Cox & Demmitt, 173) which reduces sexuality to a type of biological function that is like sleeping and eating. Sexual relations without a moral compass lose the essential dimension of love in the sexual relationship: since the education is largely secular and tolerant to a diversity of viewpoints, it cannot address the ethical context of love in which the sexual relationship must be thought so as to fully understand its function.
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This point is further emphasized by studies conducted on sex education and its effects. For example, “a survey conduced in the UK, and released in March 2004 has revealed that teenage pregnancy rates are highest in areas that have been most aggressive in promoting sex education.” (www.life.org.nz) Such sex education therefore encourages sexual activity: arguably, this is because sexuality is promoted without any accompanying message about what sexuality means, the importance of a monogamous partnerships and love.
It is necessary to think about sexuality as something that is more than “plumbing.” We have to teach the young that sexual relationships also have a romantic and loving and ethical meaning. The school system cannot accomplish this because of its own structure: this rather can only be accomplished with loved ones and families who have a shared ethical perspective.
- Author unknown. “Sex Education and Abortion.” www.life.org.nz Retrieved 25 May 2014
- Cox, Frank D. & Demmitt, Kevin. Human Intimacy: Marriage, the Family and Its Meaning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2014.
