I used to be a high school math teacher, so I would never give an assignment such as the following: Go to stores to document condom brands and the unique features that each offers. For that matter, I’m not entirely sure how I would respond if I were mandated to teach such a curriculum as a health or science teacher.

While I currently do not have to resolve this dilemma, many public school teachers in New York City, N.Y. are not so fortunate.

New York City’s new sex education curriculum

Beginning in 2012, middle and high school students will take new, mandatory sex education classes, which originally included assignments that are even more explicit and controversial than the one I specified above. Thanks to a parental and public backlash, however, some of the curriculum content was removed.

The intent of the new curriculum is to help teens avoid pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. These goals are noble, to be sure, and are reasons why the new curriculum focuses on, for instance, birth control methods — though I’m not entirely sure whether learning about condom features is necessary.

Teaching birth control or abstinence-only

Much to the chagrin of abstinence-only advocates, supporters of the new curriculum have argued that an abstinence-only curriculum is ineffective at achieving these goals.

On the other hand, I’ve always speculated whether teaching birth control incentivizes students to become sexually active. One former student of mine and her boyfriend decided to do so upon learning that birth control products were available for use. She later confessed her regret to me for losing a part of herself that she could never get back.

Nonetheless, this is only one case, and some studies and educators suggest that my speculations are incorrect. Teaching about safe sex does not cause teens to have sex, they say, and birth control methods must be taught because teens will become sexually active anyway. Abstinence-only programs will not change their minds.

The importance of character formation

Advocates of teaching birth control may be correct. Maybe the sex education curriculum that they prefer does, in fact, lower rates of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. Yet is it enough for sex education to only focus on these goals?

I think not. A more crucial factor remains overlooked, namely, character formation.

The choices that an individual makes today affects the person he will become tomorrow. Teens who decide to become sexually active will develop certain dispositions that they otherwise would not possess had they decided to remain sexually inactive.

Moreover, the choices that sexually-active teens have made in the past positions them to face future situations that sexually-inactive teens will not face. The two types of teens will also respond differently to their respective situations due to the divergence of character between them. Foolish choices lead towards vicious cycles. Wise choices lead towards virtuous cycles.

The need for a notion of human wholeness

Merely viewing sex education as a way to help individual teens avoid unwanted pregnancies or sexually-transmitted diseases is incomplete. People are not simply animals or material objects. They possess a mind and heart. Personal character and the inner life must be nurtured in order for people to flourish, but many sex education curricula, such as the one in New York City, only appear skin deep.

Similarly, supporters of abstinence-only curriculum need an argument that moves beyond the knee-jerk reaction that premarital sex is just wrong. Their position can become more cogent with a rich conception of what it means for a human to flourish.

In fact, the conception of human flourishing needs to be substantiated in order to realize any good curriculum, whether it concerns sex or not. For without an understanding of what a human is truly supposed to be education will simply be, at best, unable to produce people who flourish, or at worst, an aimless institution. A good education only makes sense when there is sense to what a good human ought to be.