Values in Sex Education

From Principles to Practice

Mark Halstead, Michael Reiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134572007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Sex education is rarely out of the news. Despite this, there exist surprisingly few studies of the principles, policies and practice of sex education. This book provides such an examination, focusing on the values to which children are exposed in sex education.
Sex education inevitably involves the transmission of values, regardless of whether this is intended by teachers. Throughout the book, academic and professional literature on both values and sex education is reviewed and discussed. The authors look at the implicit liberal values, which underpin programmes of sex education, and at the challenges presented by the diversity of values in contemporary society. The book also considers:
* Why values are central to sex education
* Children's voices and children's values
* Religious and family values
* Achievable aims for school sex education
* How to help young people to reflect critically on the influences to which they are exposed and on their own developing sexual values
* How to build values into practical approaches to sex education at both primary and secondary levels.
This timely book will help all those involved in sex education to steer a path between controversial and often opposing views and will be essential reading for students on PGCE and BEd courses. It will also be a valuable resource for teachers and professionals involved in teaching sex education such as teachers of personal and social education, form tutors, heads of year, school nurses, health workers and academics.

Part I

Chapter1
Why values are central to sex education

Values in sex education

The central argument of this book is that values permeate every aspect of sex education in schools. It is impossible to plan or put into practice any programme of sex education without reference to values, though sometimes the values may not be brought to consciousness and made the subject of reflection. 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. We shall 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 wellbeing 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. As we shall see later, if students are asked what they want to learn in a sex education course, questions of values figure very highly on their lists.

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 (e.g. Scott et al. 1994: 15; Ray and Went 1995: eh. 4; Harrison 2000: eh. 3). However, since the early 1990s a few contributions have appeared with a major focus on the relationship of values to sex education (Lenderyou and Porter 1994; Morris 1994; Reiss 1997a), and rather more on the educational implications of the sexual beliefs and values of religious and ethnic groups (Sarwar 1989; Brown 1993; Thomson 1993; Catholic Education Services n.d.; D’Oyen 1996; Reiss and Mabud 1998; Blake and Katrak 2002). 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.

We shall argue throughout this book that it is only when we have a clear and detailed grasp of the principles that should guide sex education that we can move to effective planning and practice. As a first step, we shall argue in the remainder of this chapter that:

• the term ‘values’ refers to the principles by which we judge things to be good, right, desirable or worthy of respect
• an analysis of the concept of sex education reveals that values are at its core
• even if it were in some sense desirable, it would be impossible in practice to devise a value-free form of sex education
• the process of values development begins in earliest childhood and goes on throughout life whether or not the school does anything about it, but the school is uniquely placed to influence the process by providing suitable opportunities for discussion, reflection and increasing understanding
• because of the above, planners and teachers have a duty to reflect seriously on the explicit and implicit values which underpin their work, in order to ensure that they are reasonable, justifiable and in the best interests of the young people they teach.

The final section of this chapter looks more closely at the role of the school in values education in the area of sexuality, and argues that schools have three distinct duties: to uphold the values of the broader society, especially where these have emerged through open debate and the democratic search for shared values; to fill in gaps in children’s knowledge and understanding, including their understanding of core values; and to encourage children to pick a rational path through the variety of influences that impinge on their experience and to construct their own developing value framework through a process of critical reflection.

What are values?

Although several surveys of values have been carried out since the early 1980s (for teenage values, see Francis and Kay 1995; for British values, see Abrams et al. 1985; for European values, see Barker et al. 1992), there is still much disagreement about the term ‘values’. People disagree, for example, over whether values have universal validity, or apply only within particular cultures or traditions; whether values must be shared or are simply a matter of personal preference; whether there is a difference between private and public values; and whether there are any overarching principles by which conflicts between values may be resolved.

Warnock (1996) defines values as shared preferences; she writes, ‘What we value is what we either like or dislike… The crucial word in this definition is we. In speaking of values, there is a presumption that humans… share the preferences so designated’ (1996: 46, original emphases). However, this definition is open to criticism on three grounds. First, ‘values’ seems to refer to something more fundamental than ‘preferences’, as many writers have recognised; Shaver and Strong (1976), for example, define them as ‘our standards and principles for judging… things to be good, worthwhile or desirable’ (1976: 15). Second, the extent to which values have to be shared is open to debate. Certainly it makes sense to talk of ‘personal values’, and Raths et al. (1966) emphasise this personal dimension in their definition of values: ‘beliefs, attitudes or feelings that an individual is proud of [and] is willing to publicly affirm’ (1966: 28). On the other hand, no community can exist without some shared values, and no community activity (such as teaching or running a school) is possible either. As we shall see in Chapter 2, the biggest problem facing sex educators today is the sheer diversity of sexual values that exist in our society. Third, Warnock’s definition confuses ‘values’ with ‘valuing something’. I may value chocolate, but this does not make it one of my values. It is true that to talk of the value of something (as in the phrase ‘valueadded’) has always been to talk of its worth, and that when we value something we are making a high estimate of its worth. However, the term values (in the plural) now seems to be used to refer to the criteria by which we make such value judgements, that is to the principles on which the value judgements are based.

For the purposes of the present volume we have adapted the following definition from Halstead and Taylor (2000). Values are principles and fundamental convictions which act as general guides to behaviour; enduring beliefs about what is worthwhile; ideals for which one strives; broad standards by which particular beliefs and actions are judged to be good, right, desirable or worthy of respect. Examples of values are love, fairness, equality, freedom, justice, happiness, security, peace of mind, truth. Values can therefore be distinguished from related and sometimes overlapping terms like ‘virtues’ (which are personal qualities or dispositions like truthfulness, generosity, courage, loyalty or kindness) and, to a certain extent, though there is some overlap, from ‘attitudes’ (which are acquired tendencies or predispositions to make judgements and behave in a predictable manner, such as openness, tolerance, respect, acceptance and freedom from prejudice).

This definition occupies the middle ground in the debate about whether values are subjective or objective. At one extreme is the view of values as a set of subjective criteria for making judgements. This may be linked to a postmodern, relativist view that no set of values can be shown to be objectively better than another. This view has sometimes been claimed to provide a useful way of resolving disputes over values in culturally plural societies: ‘You have your values and I have mine’. At the other extreme is the view of values as absolute, that is, as applying everywhere and at all times. On this view, certain human actions are always right or always wrong, irrespective of circumstance. Between the two extremes is the view that certain values, such as human rights or equal opportunities, have some kind of objectivised quality, perhaps because ‘some social arrangements and patterns of behaviour promote wellbeing more than others’ (Beck 1990: 3). These values may therefore be explored in a systematic and objective fashion, though it is also acknowledged that they are socially constructed and that the extent to which they are recognised may vary over time and from one group or society to another.

It is important to note that there are different types of values. There are clearly significant distinctions between moral values, intellectual values, aesthetic values and what Dunlop (1996: 69) calls ‘hedonic’ values (i.e. the values of pleasurable and painful sensations). 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). In Part 2, where we discuss certain values in detail in relation to sex education, we use a mixture of these categories.

What is sex education?

Sex education is more than the study of human sexuality in a biology or social science course. The aim of the study of human sexuality is for students to come to know more about sex, whereas the aim of sex education extends beyond this, and includes encouraging certain kinds of skills, attitudes, dispositions, behaviour and critical reflection on personal experience. Another way of expressing this is to say that sex education must in some way be educational, and education is an inescapably value-laden activity. If we think of ‘education’ as the initiation of children into a programme of worthwhile activities, then, as we have seen, values provide the criteria by which we judge something to be worthwhile. If we think of ‘education’ as primarily concerned with the balanced development of the whole person, then it is clear that the choices that any person makes in relation to behaviour and lifestyle are shaped by values. If this is true of education, it applies all the more to sex education, for the aims, content, methods and success of sex education are all determined by values. Sex education can never be, as Jones (1989: 57) suggests it is, a matter of ‘disinterested enquiry’: we all have a vested interest in sex.

One way of clarifying the concept of sex education would be to ask what the characteristics of a sexually educated person would be (see Collyer 1995: 9–12). A few examples will suffice at this stage. First, a sexually educated person will have certain information - for example, how to achieve pregnancy and how to avoid it. But it is clear that deciding which information to give students (e.g. prioritising the avoidance of pregnancy over the preparation of students for the pleasures and responsibilities of parenthood) involves a value judgement. The value judgement made here may have as much to do with socioeconomic values as with personal wellbeing. Second, a sexually educated person will have certain personal qualities - for example, appropriate self-assertiveness in resisting peer pressure and in saying ‘no’ to unwanted sexual experience. Behind the encouragement of personal qualities like these lie the liberal values of autonomy, equality, fairness and personal security. Third, a sexually educated person will have certain attitudes - for example, respect for people whose views differ from his or her own on controversial issues such as abortion, contraception, same-sex relationships, celibacy and divorce. Once again, these attitudes are underpinned by the liberal values of tolerance, freedom, equality and respect. Fourth, a sexually educated person will have certain skills - for example, the skill of responsible sexual decision-making. Since sexual desire usually focuses on another person, responsible sexual decision-making involves taking account of that person’s needs and wishes as well as our own. It involves evaluating conflicting desires and choosing between them, respecting and being sensitive to the sexual vulnerability of others, reflecting on what we owe to others and on what we can expect from them. All of these skills are firmly grounded in moral values.

In brief, values permeate the whole process of sex education. The question therefore arises why anyone should want to try to provide value-free sex education. There are two possible answers to this question:

• because the diversity that exists in contemporary society makes a consensus on values impossible, especially in a controversial domain like sexuality (see Archard 2000: ch. 5)
• because some of the aims of sex education, notably the reduction of teenage pregnancy and the reduction of risk-taking behaviours such as exposure to disease, are so important that anything which gets in the way of the ‘safersex’ message (such as moral guidance or advice) should be discarded as more of a hindrance than a help.

The issue of values diversity is a major topic and will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, but let us consider a number of points in response to the second statement. First, it is clear from what has already been said in this chapter that the decision to prioritise the reduction of risk-taking behaviour is itself a value judgement. Second, both the reduction in teenage pregnancy and the avoidance of infection involve values including responsibility and respect for others. For example, students need to know why it would be wrong to have unprotected sexual intercourse with someone without revealing that one was suffering from a sexually transmitted infection. Not to teach such issues as moral matters is to sell both students and society short. Third, it is not helping students to make moral decisions, but undue moralising is likely to put students off (see Warnock 1979: 89). By moralising we mean preaching, or trying to ‘improve’ the morals of students prescriptively by imposing specific moral values on them (as opposed to helping them to reflect on moral values and think through the implications of these values for their own lives). Fourth, where ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• References