AFTER THE WORD "EARNEST" IN THE DICTIONARY

Task Force on Interpersonal Relations, Family Life, and Intimacy (Amitai Etzioni, Chair)

Preamble

From a wide variety of backgrounds, viewpoints, and experiences, we have come together to examine a complex set of issues that deeply affects our entire society: the rise of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual exploitation, and the related moral, social, and psychological factors. Instructed by different religious and secular perspectives and by divergent political and social philosophical persuasions, drawn from academic and practical backgrounds, we join here to focus our examination on what is commonly referred to as 'sex education' in public schools, our task as part of a broader communitarian project on character education. Our purpose is not to review data for research purposes or to spell out specifics for classroom implementation. Rather, our goal is to chart a morally sound course and design a moral framework for programs that are too often constructed in the absence of such concern.

I try not to pick on the Communitarians, because if there have to be leftists, these are the kind of earnest, ineffectual leftists I prefer and because, other than a few dim jokes, I have nothing particularly new to say about them. This position paper on sex education, though, is such a perfect example of the policy wonk belief that serious and engaged means dry and humorless -- a belief shared by people on the left and right -- that I had to post it. Posted by David Cohen at July 24, 2003 1:49 PM