The sex education debate is back, in the shape of Channel 4’s “The Sex Education Show” and BBC Five Live’s “Let’s Talk About Sex”.
Clearly, all is not well, particularly as far as teenagers and young people are concerned. STI infection rates continue are on a firm upward trend, while teenage pregnancy and teenage abortion remain stubbornly high, despite hundreds of millions of pounds of investment over the last decade.
There is one big problem. No-one seems sure exactly what the point of sex education ought to be, with the result that the debate about its “effectiveness” becomes rather surreal. Lots of people are pretty sure that they know what is wrong with the current model of sex education – not enough of it, too much of it, too explicit, not explicit enough – but only a minority have constructive, well thought through solutions.
It is often suggested that the root of the problem is ignorance. Teenagers have risky sex because they do not know enough about the consequences, or because they have been told urban myths about the avoidance of pregnancy and disease. The more they know about sex, this line of argument suggests, the more likely they are to avoid its various pitfalls. Hence the demand for ever more explicit sex education, which many parents find inappropriate.
This way of thinking goes all the way back to the philosopher Plato, who argued that becoming a good person was simply a question of knowledge. He was convinced that it was impossible to know what the right thing was, but do the wrong thing, hence his view that the best way to achieve good government was to subject future rulers to a rigorous ethical education.
But he was wrong.
We do the wrong thing against our better judgment all the time. We know we should do the washing-up rather than watching reruns of Top Gear on Dave – but that doesn’t stop us from vegetating in front of the TV. We know we should go for a run instead of spending the whole evening playing video games – but then it rains and we opt for 4 hours on the Xbox. We know we shouldn’t have too many drinks of an evening – but when you’re in the pub the temptation can be overwhelming. This is because humans can be pretty weak-willed. Doing the right thing is much more often a question of volition than knowledge, that is to say it is about training ourselves to use willpower and self-control.
That is not to say that ignorance is not a problem. There is a need for clear factual information about such matters as contraception, STIs and pregnancy. But ignorance is not the main problem. The real problem is a moral one, which I hope to explore in upcoming posts.