Amitai Etzioni

About the author: Amitai Etzioni is a professor at George Washington University, founder and chair of the Communitarian Network, and editor of the quarterly communitarian journal Responsive Community.

Sex education should include more than a lesson in human biology and hygiene. Students should be urged to defer both sex and marriage until they are mature enough to handle the responsibilities and self-control required of sexual intimacy. However, teens should be provided with the information necessary to protect themselves against disease and pregnancy should they decide not to wait. Most importantly, parents should be involved in their children's sex-education programs.

Instead of approaching the discussion of sex in public schools as a matter of health and safety bereft of moral content or forbidding discussion of sex out of traditional moral concerns (seeking to rely exclusively on the...