A preliminary short assignment of 1000 to 1500 words - Essay Example

While autonomy simply resided on morals in its early years, views about this began to change in the 21st century. According to Dearden, autonomy is possible in all aspects of a person’s life. In addition, what a person thinks and does are determined by himself and personal autonomy is not just part of morality but an all-encompassing personal ideal (1975). This is in context with his previous writings which claims that a person can be autonomous based on three criteria. First, a person must form his own judgments on what to think and do.

Second, a person is disposed critically to reflect on his or her own first-order judgments. Lastly, a person is “disposed to integrate his or her actual belief and conduct round these first-order and reflective judgments” (Dearden, Education and the development of reason, 1972). He further qualifies autonomy as a highly desirable aim of education. Top of Form Bottom of Form I, for one, agree with Dearden’s claim that personal autonomy can be practiced in all levels of a person’s life, and is not only rooted in the context of morality.

Furthermore, education should be a vehicle in promoting autonomy and autonomy must definitely be an aim of education. In fact, autonomy may be implemented and encouraged in certain levels, including, but certainly not limited to, sex education, religion, and language education. Sex education Sex education in school has always been a sensitive topic that is either supported or discouraged by conflicting philosophical views. However, it is believed that school sex education develops rational autonomy in students and thus allowing them to make more informed decisions regarding their sexual health.

As mentioned earlier with reference to Dearden (1972), rational personal autonomy is “displayed by individuals who act intentionally, with understanding and without external controlling influences that determine their actions.” However, each of these three criteria is faced with a problem especially when put in the context of young people because expecting them to be taking sexual actions, among others, unintentionally, fully understanding it, and with the absence of outsider controlling influences would be quite unrealistic.

However, these criteria can actually be met to various degrees such that a successful sex education can be considered as playing a key role in enhancing rational personal autonomy. In addition, the idea of “understanding” is itself important because people have very different understandings about the facts concerning very important issues like homosexuality, masturbation and lifetime monogamy (Curren, 2007). Furthermore, it would be quite naive to equate the idea of having no presence of external controlling influences that decide an individual’s actions to be unaffected by the things that other people think, say or do.

Clearly, with regard to our sexuality and sexual morals, no person is entire of itself. Most importantly, a great volume of scientific articles provide evidence that through the rational sexual autonomy that an effective school sex education develops, the initiation of sexual intercourse is postponed among its recipients and the effective use of contraceptives is observed (Curren, 2007). Religion Interestingly, empirical evidence supports the idea that religion can develop