Sex Education

The selection of aims for sex education involves explicit or implicit value judgements, and so does the selection of content and method. The decision to provide sex education in the first place is based on the assumption that it will be valuable for children. One could argue further that sex education involves the transmission of values, whether or not this is conscious and intentional on the teacher's part, and whether or not the values are actually accepted by the students.

In some respects, sex education is just like other subjects on the curriculum: it involves the transmission of information; it contributes to the development of personal autonomy; and it seeks to promote the interests of both the individual and the broader society. In other respects, however, sex education is quite different. It is about human relationships, and therefore includes a central moral dimension. It is about the private, intimate life of the learner and is intended to contribute to his or her personal development and sense of well-being or fulfilment. It generally involves intense emotions, to do not only with intimacy, pleasure and affection but often also with anxiety, guilt and embarrassment. In all of these respects, values are involved. We can decide what information merits transmission, what the interests of the individual and of society are, or how to reassure young people, only by making value judgements. Of course, young people recognise this, almost intuitively.

Most serious books on sex education nowadays acknowledge the importance of values, though many give the topic of values in sex education comparatively brief attention before moving on to what they present as more pressing matters. However, since the early 1990s a few contributions have appeared with a major focus on the relationship of values to sex education, and rather more on the educational implications of the sexual beliefs and values of religious and ethnic groups. What is still needed-and what the present book seeks to provide-is a serious investigation of the place of values in sex education, combined with an attempt to explore the implications of these values for planning and practice.

It is important to note that there are different types of values. Moral values are so dominant in our thinking about sexual matters that sometimes the terms 'values' and 'moral values' are used interchangeably. But perhaps the other types of values also have some relevance to sex education. The provision of accurate, relevant information in sex education (rather than, say, propaganda) illustrates the intellectual value of truth. Archard (2000) points out that sex may sometimes be regarded as bad not just for moral reasons but because it is 'ugly, unbecoming and repellent' (2000:20), which presumably belongs in the domain of aesthetic values.

Jones (1989) puts forward as one aim for sex education 'helping people to achieve as much sexual satisfaction and pleasure as possible' (1989:57), which illustrates hedonic values. However, values are more frequently categorised on the basis of the ideology which gives rise to them (e.g. liberal, Catholic, democratic or humanist values) or on the basis of the different disciplines or departments of life to which they belong (political, economic, spiritual, moral, social, cultural, artistic, scientific, religious, environmental or health-related values).