This summary of Whole Person Learning Theory (WPLT), developed by Dr. Onalee McGraw, director of Educational Guidance Institute, is explained more fully in her manual, Teaching the Whole Person about Love, Sex and Marriage.

Teaching the Whole Person about Love, Marriage and Sexuality

Programs that teach abstinence until marriage are based on the premise that in our human nature, our body, mind, will, emotions, as well as social and moral senses function together to make us who we are; our bodies and our sexuality are an integral part of our unique and personal inner core. In this inner core is the natural human desire to give and receive unconditional love.

If the whole person concept of human sexuality is true, the mind and the will cannot simply be "summoned" to the sexual negotiation table, leaving the heart behind. In the whole person view, we find the greatest happiness in our sexual relationships by thinking, feeling and acting in conformity with our fully integrated human nature.

Parents, teachers and youth-serving professionals who aspire to educate for character and virtue share a common task: Helping young people form a personal identity that reflects the wholeness of human nature. This sense of wholeness stems from the internalized virtuous habits of the heart and provides the effective antidote to the toxins in our secularized culture.

Our challenge is to help young people understand that they have the capacities of mind, heart and will sustained by the moral domain of the conscience to become emotionally committed to a loving and lasting relationship in marriage.

The ABC's of the Whole Person Paradigm

Affirm, explain and defend the whole person view of human nature and sexuality;

Build an educational scaffold that elevates love and sexuality to a place of honor in a committed marriage and family life;

Cultivate virtue and educate the learner's moral sense.

Whole Person Learning Theory: Building on a Unitive View of Human Nature

Contemporary scholars striving to overcome the errors of early twentieth century theorists assume that to arrive at credible explanations for learning, motivation and behavior, human capacity cannot be compartmentalized into segmented abstractions. These earlier theorists, such as Freud, Skinner, Piaget and Rogers, failed to explain human nature in its wholeness. Jerome Kagan, author of the Nature of the Child, explains to those who study the human condition that "we must never treat the biological and the expreiential as separate, independent forces. Kagan explains how "reason and feeling compete for control over moral behavior, with the will sitting like a judge being addressed by two different counselors" (Jerome Kagan, The Nature of the Child, Basic Books: New York, 1994). Whole Person Learning Theory in its basic principles seeks to address reason and feeling, the moral sense and our nature as social beings.

Whole Person Learning Theory Principles Summarized

The educational task in the character-based abstinence unitl marriage approach is to demonstrate the ethical connection between love, marriage and sexuality by:

- Presenting emotional word pictures that integrate the expression of sexuality with love and marriage;

- Assisting learners to set personal goals for abstinence unil marriage in the present, and committed love in marriage in the future;

- Modeling the normative meaning of love, marriage and sexuality through stories, personal testimonies, role playing and interactive lessons;

- Teaching abstinence until marriage as a standard to help learners internally regulate their behavior so that the standard is a fully integrated part of how learners conceptualize their core identity and integrity;

- Encouraging learners to build the confidence and self-efficay to persever in their conscious adoption of the abstinence lifestyle before marriage and to become persons of character and virtue in all of life, including the sexual domain.