Please permit me to share why I think Onalee McGraw's ground-breaking maunal, Teaching the Whole Person About Love, Sex and Marriage, offers the most theoretically integrative and pedagogically powerful vision in the field of sexuality education today. In my judgment, her book does five things that will be invaluable to anyone working in this crucial area:

1. It provides a coherent intellectual history of the philosophical and psychological theories that have shaped contemporary thinking about the human person, the meaning of morality, sexual behavior, and sex education. Understanding this history of ideas will enable teachers and their students to get outside the cultural waters we swim in, critically evaluate the ideas that often affect our thinking about sex without our being aware of them, and make sense of the disturbing sexual trends (oral sex among middle schoolders, sexually explicit "freak dancing" among high schoolers, boys who rape without remorse, men who prefer cohabitation to the commitment of marriage, women who feel victimized by the sexual revolution that was supposed to liberate them) that increasingly define our debased sexual culture.

2. It presents a complete theory of the human person, grounded in an understanding of human nature and interdisciplinary scholarship that makes accesible, as no other current work in sexuality education does, complementary insights from philosophy, developmental and social psychology, sociology, social history and neurobiology.

3. Using "safe sex" educators' own criteria for "a good intimate relationship" ("consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable, and protected"), it shows us the inadequacy of a sex education paradigm that lacks a grounded, reality-based theory of the human person and a psychological understanding of the developing, emotionally vulnerable adolescent.

4. It explains why contemporary abstinence-until-marriage education needs a more complete theory of the human person to achieve its worthwhile goals.

5. It lays out a set of educational principles and illustrative pedagocial practices that flow from a "whole person theory," one that views all young people as having the capacity to develop "a mind to reason, a heart to love, a will to choose, and a conscience to distinguish right from wrong." Given these universal capacities, all young people, with the right guidance, are capable of becoming whole and flourishing persons; able to develop a strong personal character; form loving, lasting, and fulfilling relationships; contribute to the lives of others; and achieve authentic happiness.

Here are some of the core theoretical ideas of McGraw's Whole Person Theory:

• Right and wrong do exist.
• What is right is based, as Aristotle, Cicero, C.S. Lewis, and other great thinkers have long argued, on what is objectively true about human nature and the human condition.
• Our task in developing our conscience is to discern the moral truth, not to invent it.
• Our task in character development is to live according to the moral truth once we have discerned it.
• The truth about sex is that there is an objective moral structure to sex and right and wrong ways to use it.
• The ultimate intimacy (sexual intercourse) "works right" only within the ultimate commitment (marriage) because our bodies cannot be separated from our souls. The human person is a unity, not a duality; functionally integrated, not compartmentalized. In sex, our whole person, body and soul, is involved. That's why sex involves such strong emotions - feelings that require a secure, truly committed love relationship.
• The family is the primary seedbed of virtue. The decline of marriage and family is the major source of the social and moral ills we face as a society. Sex education, at its core, must therefore be marriage and family education -  helping young people develop the character they need to save sexual intimacy for marriage and become faithful spouses and commmitted parents.

The famous social psychologist Kurt Lewin once remarked, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory." Lewin understood that in any field of endeavor, we need good theory in order to generate good practice. Onalee McGraw's new book provides the theory the field of sex education has been waiting for. Whole Person Theory corrects what has been wrong in "comprehensive," safe sex education and supplies what has been missing in abstinence education.

This seminal work has the potential to transform the landscape of education in human sexuality. If we use it well, it can help us build a better society and a more promising future for our children.

Thomas Lickona

Professor, Education

Director, Center for the 4th and 5th Rs

Thomas Lickona is author of the best-selling classic Educating for Character, and co-author with Judith Lickona and William Boudreau, M.D. of Sex, Love & You: Making the Right Decision. His most recent book is Character Matters: How to Help our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues, A Touchstone Book, published by Simon & Schuster, in 2004. Dr. Lickona is director of the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, based at the State University College at Cortland, New York. The Center is dedicated to "helping schools, teachers, and parents develop good character in youth."

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