Below you’ll find one of three abstracts submitted for presentation at the Society for Educational Studies 2024 annual conference in Oxford. All three were accepted. I chose to present this one, as it aligned most closely with my current line of research. You can find the other accepted abstract here. The same abstracts were submitted for the Jubilee Centre’s 2025 annual conference, but none were accepted.
In the abstract, I explore a novel neo-Aristotelian interpretation of the claim that early sex education robs children of their innocence. I suggest that childhood is a time of innocence insofar as many childhood behaviours are intrinsically motivated – children play for the sake of playing, draw for the sake of drawing, etc (see Key concepts). Early sex education, I argue, may shift children towards a more instrumentalist mindset, encouraging them to think in terms of utility rather than intrinsic value.