Spiritual values: Terry McLaughlin on a missing dimension to sex education

Terry McLaughlin wrote two articles on sex education. His first focuses on two areas of moral controversy—the kind of values that should guide and support sex education, and the extent to which the common school is an appropriate context for the sensitive development of their sexual understanding. His second has a narrower focus—whether sex education should have a spiritual dimension, how such a dimension could be developed, and what purposes it would serve. Following a critical review of both articles, we explore the implications of Terry’s arguments on spiritual values more fully, in the light of: (a) the huge range of opinions that exist about the relationship between sexuality and spirituality; and (b) claims that young children have a natural spirituality. We conclude that a broad concept of spiritual values, that includes love, trust, commitment and care, is appropriate for all children, that a narrower conception (focusing on such things as Catholic sexual values or feminine spirituality) might also have a place in school, and that a spiritual dimension to sex education will help to counter the growing sexual dangers children face from so-called ‘adult’ visual material and exploitative social media.