An excellent article about character-based sex education can be found over on Mercator. It's by Thomas Lickona, a developmental psychologist, professor and author of nine books. Dr. Lickona applies the "marshmallow test" to sexual attitudes among young Americans and, thank the Lord, finds some optimistic results. Here's the introduction (and thanks, Stuart, for the heads up).In his famous "Marshmallow Test", Stanford University psychologist Walter Mischel offered four-year-old children a deal: If they could delay eating a nice, fresh marshmallow until he returned from a 15-minute errand, he would give them two marshmallows. But if they ate the marshmallow before he returned, that would be the only one they would get.
What would you do if you were four? Different four-year-olds did different things. Some devoured the marshmallow in a matter of seconds. But others managed to wait the full 15 minutes and earn the second marshmallow. Mischel's marshmallow study subsequently followed its subjects into their senior year of high school and compared the "grabbers" with the "waiters".
Human beings, given the right support, tend to rise to meet high expectations. Chastity is difficult, but so is most of what is truly worthwhile in life. It is time for all of us, schools and parents, to raise the bar. Our children will someday thank us. Those who could delay gratification at age four were, as teenagers: still better able to delay gratification in pursuit of goals; better able to make plans and follow through on them; more likely to persevere in the face of difficulty; more self-reliant and dependable; better able to cope with stress; better able to concentrate on a task; more academically competent -- scoring, on average, more than 100 points higher on a college entrance exam than the children who did not delay gratification on the marshmallow test at age four. Mischel concluded: The ability to regulate an impulse in the pursuit of a goal is a "meta-ability" that affects the development of many other important capacities. Throughout history, self-discipline -- including sexual self-discipline -- has been considered a mark of good character. In our time, however, wisdom about sexual restraint was swept aside by the sexual revolution, still making its way around the world.
However, chastity may be making a comeback. In the United States, high school students who say they have not had sexual intercourse are in the majority for the first time in 25 years. There are new voices speaking up for sexual sanity, such as Wendy Shalit, author of A Return to Modesty and Girls Gone Mild, and Dawn Eden, a former rock music historian who has written The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfilment While Keeping your Clothes On...
