The great teacher Rabbi Hillel was once asked by an unbeliever to tell the whole of the Torah while standing on one foot. He answered, "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the rest is but commentary." Then Hillel said something quite extraordinary. He told the man, "Now go and learn it."

Hillel understood something fundamental when he urged the man to go and study this apparently simple injunction. All human beings would say that they prefer to be treated with respect, care and consideration, but these qualities are often absent in human relationships. Why?

Human beings spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about the ways in which parents, bosses, children and friends fail to treat them the way they wish. We often recognize how far we are from enjoying ideal relationships but we do not, as Hillel urged, make the art of loving a subject of study. Why not?

The Art of Loving Well is a literature-based character education program that was funded under the Adolescent Family Life Act as a demonstration project by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Adolescent Programs in October 1987. The curriculum has been field-tested since September 1988 in rural, suburban and urban centers in Maine, Massachusetts and South Carolina. Qualitative and quantitative research results indicate considerable success in a number of dimensions.

Although the original grant was intended to delay sexual behavior among adolescents, from the beginning the design departed from traditional sexuality education curricula. In one sense the term "sexuality education" narrows thinking and does injustice to the complexity of love and sexuality in human relationships. Sexual intercourse is only one facet of a much larger human concern: that is, discovering how human beings can learn to treat each other with care and respect, indispensable elements of our ability to love well.

The Art of Loving Well curriculum is based upon telling and listening to stories and on the recognition that great stories can give form, depth and texture to the complexity involved in loving each other. All cultures have been concerned about love in all its manifestations since the beginning of time. And great poets and storytellers have given expression to these concerns for just as long. There are four reasons why reading and talking about stories and poems is an effective way to promote self-reflection and knowledge about the art of loving.

Literature is interesting. Memorable stories describe the struggles the key characters face. We gain insight into their success in achieving a higher stage of integration as they successfully resolve their conflicts. Conflict is a central reality in the lives of all human beings. Good stories offer us a vision of how to win out and emerge able to develop fulfilling relationships. The best stories use language that addresses our emotions. We remember great stories because they move us in a way that mere information can never achieve.

It's easier to talk about literature. Almost everyone has experienced some difficulty in talking directly about complex, intimate issues like love and sexuality. It is particularly difficult for adolescents who are self-conscious amid strangers in a school environment. By contrast, the full range of important matters about how human beings love can be raised when we can talk about the characters in a story. All parties to the discussion-teachers, students and parents-- have the story and the characters in the story between them, thus making it possible to engage in a discussion about the characters rather than about themselves.

Literature allows acknowledgment of emotions. When we urge parents to talk with their children about sexuality, as we so often do, we ignore the powerful emotional barriers that stand in the way of such discussion. To ignore or avoid these emotional barriers violates what is most important to acknowledge: the complex, often dark and mysterious emotional realities associated with sexuality and loving. None of us have an easy time with love and sex, precisely because these realities are so powerful. By ignoring complex emotions we indicate that they are not important and that sex is simply a physical phenomenon. Good literature does justice to these complexities and allows people to talk about them safely.

Literature provides avenues for reflection. Good literature does not preach, but at the same time it holds out a vision of what constitutes the good life. Adolescents--who are especially averse to sermonizing--may identify strongly with a character who grapples with difficult decisions and learns from mistakes. Discussions about an enduring story and memorable characters allow each of us to reach our own conclusions about how we would like to live our lives. These conclusions become our convictions, the standards by which we want to live. How much more securely these inner convictions will be than views thrust upon or driven into us by others.

The Art of Loving Well is an anthology of forty selections of classic folk tales, myths, contemporary short stories and poems. Among the authors whose works are included are Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence, John Updike, Gish Jen and Maya Angelou. The selections in our final edition reflect the ethnic diversity of our student population.

Accompanying each story is a wide range of student activities, including many that call on students to consult with their parents or other adults. The program is designed to complement and reinforce family and community values. Central to achieving this goal is fostering relationships between parents and schools. A teacher's guide, a videotape for parents, and a videotape for teachers complete the program.

The Art of Loving Well is intended to supplement a standard curriculum, not supplant it. The curriculum includes examples of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Assignments can be adapted to correlate with instruction on sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of poetry or grammar. Health education teachers use the text to complement curricula for which they are responsible or to teach in collaboration with a language arts teacher. Although designed for eighth graders, the curriculum has been used successfully with students in seventh through twelfth grades.

The three sections of the anthology correspond with human experience: Early Loves and Losses, Romance, and Commitment and Marriage. Each section is introduced by a folk tale. The symbolic and timeless nature of these stories makes it possible to cover a wide range of general themes that are then repeated later in the more focused, time-bound modern stories.

Early Loves and Losses begins with the story of "Little Briar-Rose" (or "Sleeping Beauty," the title by which it is more popularly known). This coming-of-age story makes possible rich discussion about many important themes.

At age fifteen, Briar-Rose pricks her finger, symbolizing the onset of puberty, something her father has done his utmost to prevent via his efforts to strip the kingdom of spindles. Immense events result. As soon as Briar-Rose pricks her finger she falls asleep for a hundred years. The entire castle falls asleep with her. A hedge of thorns grows up around the castle, and even though warned not to, many princes lose their lives trying to make their way through the hedge. Only after the hundred years have passed does a prince attempt to enter, only to find that the hedge opens up magically before him and is transformed into a hedge of roses.

Among the many themes that are effectively discussed in relationship to this story are the differences between physical and emotional maturity. Clearly, puberty can be defined as a time when the body develops sexual characteristics. The story suggests that a very different kind of readiness must develop slowly before one is emotionally ready to find the right person.

Knowing that developments can occur during times of repose can be significant for all of us who get caught up in our frenetic culture. This story makes it possible to talk with adolescents about inner development leading toward maturity, a valuable idea for young people to contemplate and one that provides them with a way of thinking about the difference between emotional and physical maturity.

This theme can be developed further. Many men try to scale the hedge of thorns surrounding the castle; all fail. Men can harm themselves by trying to rush things; they need to allow time for maturity to develop before they are ready to take on the responsibility of truly engaging a young woman.

Only when the time is right does the hedge open easily, allowing the prince to make his way unimpeded to the sleeping princess. Both men and women need to understand that heroism and wisdom sometimes involve being able to restrain oneself, knowing that the right time and the right person will come, and that in the meantime they can concentrate on quiet inner growth.

A theme repeated in a number of stories is that the nature of love between man and woman has its roots in early family relationships. Stephen Vincent Benetet's "Too Early Spring" tells the story of a young teenage couple who are alone together while their parents are away. Although they don't have sexual intercourse, they fall asleep in each other's arms. Upon discovering them, the boy's parents furiously assume the worst.

This story allows for discussion about the complex issue of trust--a matter of great concern to parents and teenagers alike. Benet's story suggests that both generations must work at developing trust under the new conditions that pertain when children reach adolescence. By talking about the story together, parents and teenagers may save themselves from the grief suffered by the characters in the Benet story.

The nature of relationships is further explored in Robert Cormier's story, "President Cleveland, Where Are You? It tells of a young boy's (Jerry's) long and hard search for a rare baseball card, his glee in finally obtaining it, and the wrenching decision he must make in the face of his older brother's Amand's need for money to buy his new girlfriend a present.

The family faces hard economic times because the father is unemployed. However, Armand is smitten and desperately wants to get his girlfriend a present. Finally, mystified as Jerry is about this strange thing called love, he sacrifices his card so that he can give his brother the money he needs to buy the present.

Tolstoy's fable "Grandfather and Grandson" describes the degree to which an elderly grandfather has become an outcast in his own family. He may no longer eat at the dinner table, since his clumsy ways might shatter the family dishes. The little grandson shames his parents into reconsidering this cruel treatment by fashioning a wooden bowl. When his parents ask him what he is doing, he tells them that he is making a wooden bowl so that when they are old they will be permitted to eat with the rest of the family. The story moves readers to think of how love and failure to love spans generations, reverberating well beyond the immediate present.

Subsequent sections contain a similarly wide range of stories. The Romance section opens with two versions of Cinderella, one similar to the Walt Disney version with which we are all familiar and the other, vastly different, retold by the Brothers Grimm.

The prince himself rather than an officer of the king seeks the owner of the slipper. The cruel stepsisters mutilate themselves in an effort to fit their feet into the slipper. The prince, nervous and anxious about the impression he is making, accepts each of the stepsisters until she is proven false. Only later does he see that Cinderella is really the true bride.

By comparing and contrasting these two stories many important themes can be discussed: the difference between developing our own convictions and having them imposed upon us; the difference between inner and outer beauty; how anxiety about not being good enough may lead one to engage in strange and hurtful actions or be unable to see the obvious.

Other stories give form to the intense anxieties we experience about our bodies and about the relationships we develop with those to whom we are sexually attracted. In the anthology this theme is explored in the story "The Makeover of Meredith Kaplan," by Barbara Girion. Girion describes a young girl's attempts to make over

her body into something other than what it is, the resulting alienation she feels from her friend Clay and even herself, and her final recognition that the need to make herself over was a response to peer pressure. Understanding this resolves any anxieties about external appearances.

Anxiety, often a central experience for young people, is given short shrift in standard sexuality education programs. By sidestepping this crucial emotional aspect of growing up, we give the message to teenagers that their anxieties are abnormal in some way. In contrast, these stories acknowledge how normal anxiety is, that it is as true for males as it is for females, and that self knowledge is crucial if we wish to avoid disas trous consequences.

These stories promote understanding among young people that love is not a simple matter but rather a crucial force in human life. Understanding it in all its facets can contribute to the capacity to love well. This involves studying love in a variety of contexts: the love between the generations and between siblings is related to the way we will love our spouses and our own children.

Furthermore, we should understand the relationship between love and loss as well as the consequences of acting impetuously to cope with anxiety or loneliness. In addition, it is important to develop knowledge about the differences between infatuation, romantic love and genuine commitment.

Besides helping students understand the dangers of acting recklessly or without knowledge, the stories also project a vision of the joy and pleasure to be realized if one undertakes the long journey toward enlightenment. This vision is given form in "Psyche and Eros," the final story in the Commitment and Marriage section.

After many trials during which she suffers intense loneliness, jealousy, loss, betrayal and a sexual affair with no relationship, Psyche makes her way through the underworld in search of Eros, the one she loves. Eventually she finds him again. Eros too has suffered, but his wounds have been healed by Psyche's devotion. Eventually they many. The story concludes with Psyche giving birth to two children whom she names Joy and Pleasure. The story holds out a vision of the great possibilities that await those willing to undertake the long hard journey to join beauty (given form by Eros) with the longings of the soul (represented by Psyche).

Boston College's Amelia Kreitzer conducted an independent evaluation to measure the curriculum's impact. Teachers who taught The Art of Loving Well used one of their classes as a control group (a group who did not study the curriculum), and data was collected in a pre-test/ post-test quasi experimental design. When control group attitudes to sexuality (those of students not exposed to the curriculum) were compared to the experimental group attitudes, the students in the experimental group showed statistically significant change in attitude. In higher proportions than the control group they felt that people should not pressure others into having sex with them; they intended to say no if pressured into having sex; and they did not intend to have sex while a young teen.

After review, the curriculum was recommended for statewide adoption by the South Carolina Department of Health Education. Many health education teachers were enthusiastic about the curriculum because it helped them delve much deeper and range much further than many of the standard textbooks they examined; it allowed them to work in conjunction with other teachers, and they lauded the fact that the crucial issues they knew to be important to young people were now more likely to find a home in the mainstream of the curriculum.

Contrary to initial expectations, this curriculum has generated no real controversy. Some expressed concern upon first hearing about it, especially that it was a values-based, character education program about something called "Loving Well." However, in every case, after concerned groups of educators read the material they became enthusiastic. The advantage of using literature is that each community, each class, each individual chooses the stories that are particularly meaningful and approaches them in any way they find appropriate to their interests and concerns.

Comments volunteered by students are indicative of the curriculum's success.

"I know I don't have real love now. I just now realize how young I am and how I'm not physically or mentally ready for any thing that demanding. Before Loving Well I didn't care and thought, "Why not? But now I'm glad I never gave in and I know I don't want to, I want to wait. --a 13-year-old girl

"I learned how to talk to my mother about things more freely. --a 14-year-old girl

"It sounds like a stupid title, but it teaches you a lot of things about life. --a 15-year-old boy

"I hope when I have [teenagers] the Loving Well program is still around." --an 18-year-old student

And teachers were equally enthusiastic.

"Loving Well is one of the most exciting places of discovery that I have experienced in sixteen years of teaching. To me it's been fascinating, an adventure I could not have predicted before I started this curriculum."

"After teaching for twenty years, I can say that this is the first curriculum that really hit the students at the appropriate developmental level....I found that discussing this literature with my classes not only enhanced their appreciation for great writing, but enabled them to think about and engage in discourse about the very fundamental issues of relationships.... This curriculum, handled well, can merge the academics with the social and emotional growth our students need for survival. I believe it epitomizes what our educational system needs-- scholastic basics that pique student interest."

"At last I remember why I started teaching English."

One teacher complained that he could not get the books back from his students because their parents were absorbed in reading the stories. Another said that Loving Well "takes the standard English curriculum and explodes it into the real world." These results make clear that The Art of Loving Well has moved effectively beyond a curriculum designed to delay sexual activity. It is a model of how to address matters of crucial concern to society and at the same time recognize that education is not simply an operational exercise in passing on information or skill training but should aim to promote those attitudes and habits of mind that allow individuals to achieve meaningful and fulfilling lives.

The practical problems that stand in the way of carrying out Hillel's injunction to study how to treat each other better can be resolved. It is possible to develop values-based curricula that complement and reinforce values critical to parents and communities. Great literature, when organized and taught properly, can help immeasurably in carrying out these complex objectives. Evidence has been provided that this is especially true with regard to that most important human concern: our capacity to love eachother.