Towards a virtue ethical approach to relationships and sex education

Abstract

The influential liberal philosophical approach to sex education fails to appreciate the moral complexities of young people’s sexuality and relationships. The resultant pedagogies are limited to the morality of tolerance and acquisition of legal sexual consent, unaware that these very notions are supervened on by much wider and more complex interrelated moral principles. A virtue ethical approach to sex education troubles the liberal boundary between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ sexual values and makes ethical sex and relationships its primary goal. Grounding sex education in this way justifies a pedagogical approach that centres moral reasoning and the development of practical wisdom concerning intimate and emotional sexual and romantic-relational matters. Virtue ethical pedagogical strategies utilizing narrative vignettes represent one innovative alternative to the dominant liberal approach to sex education.

Keywords:

• Sex education
• virtue ethics
• liberalism
• sexual ethics
• sexual consent