Socio-sexual education: a practical study in formal thinking and teachable moments

Abstract

Sex education is almost as sensitive a topic in public schooling as is the imposition of high-stakes testing. Both typically claim to be value-free contributions to the development of the student's cognitive, psychological and sometimes even moral maturity. Ironically each seems to short-change students in all three areas of development. The focus of attention in this article is that sex education represents an extraordinary ‘teachable moment’ to show students the effectiveness of the most modern tools for solving problems; namely, game theory and decision theory more generally. The fruitfulness of these teachable moments is not limited to game theory and decision theory alone. However, if these teachable moments can be utilized in highly mathematized fields, there is no doubt an abundance of teachable moments potentially bringing other disciplines together in seamless fashion with sex education as well. In principle, sex education addresses issues students will confront daily for the rest of their lives. Typically students seem to waffle their way through sexually relevant encounters driven both by the allure of reward and the fear of negative consequences. Allure and fear are relevant emotions of which students should be mindful when considering the consequences of any proposed action or principle in any aspect of social life. Considering such things in a shoot-from-the-hip fashion can be destructive to both individual and social purpose in social encounters of any kind, but most especially in sexual engagements of various kinds. By utilizing elements of decision theory, students can be shown practical applications for the mathematical formatting of difficult problems of a very practical sort. This develops critical thinking in the truest and most responsible sense.

Notes

1. Although game theory is only one approach to decision analysis generally, in the 1950s it came to be valued for its ability to illustrate simple revealing models, see for example, Edwards (1954), Simon (1955, 1957, 1959), Friedman and Savage (1948), Nozick (1990), Luce (1956, 1959), Luce and Raiffa (1957) and Rapaport (1960).