Maurice A. Bigelow

“ I should be in no hurry to introduce class instruction—I mean instruction related directly to human life; but, of course, I should encourage my teachers to emphasize the life-histories of animals and plants in the nature-study, and so lay in the pupils' minds a firm foundation for later connection between human life and all life. At the same time, I should keep my teachers on the lookout for individual pupils or groups that might need special attention and, if such be found, I should seek the coöperation of their parents. ”

“ After discussing this with many—yes, with more than a hundred—men and women, I am now convinced that dancing may have both results, depending upon the individuals. Dancing, then, has its dangers, but so have many other things that go to make up the most complete life. Eating may lead to gluttony, mountain-climbing may lead to a broken neck, swimming to drowning, music and art to sensuality, and even love is not without danger of bestial degradation. Life is full of dangers and we are constantly striving to reduce them to a minimum. ”

“ Among those who agree heartily with the proposition that by education the young man's attitude towards womanhood (§ 30) should be cultivated I find, to my surprise, many who object to any parallel attempt to influence young woman's ideals of manhood. I say that I am surprised because it has long seemed to me that many of the faults of men are largely traceable to the fact that women as a sex have not been able to hold a high standard for manhood; and, therefore, I wonder when some thinking women question the desirability of trying to influence young women by organized instruction. ”

“ Children will not remain ignorant.
"I don't believe in teaching my boys and girls any facts concerning sex. I prefer to keep them innocent until they have grown up." In these decisive words a prominent woman closed a statement of her firm conviction that the world-wide movement for the sex-instruction of young people is a stupendous mistake. Poor deluded mother! How does she expect to keep her children ignorant of the world of life around them? ”

“ Some of the students of sex problems assert with great emphasis that dress is the responsible factor in the sexual immorality of many men. Accepting the probability that there is some truth in the assertion, what is the solution of the problem? Should women in general adopt a style of dress which in lines and color is as repellently ugly as the official garb of women devotees of certain religious organizations? In short, should women make their dress decidedly unobtrusive and unattractive in order that the sexual temptations of some men may be reduced? ”

“ We have noted that numerous social and political misunderstandings check progress of individuals and nations, and we are coming to think the pathway upwards is to be found in better knowledge of social and political science. And, in like manner, in every phase of this modern life of ours we are looking to knowledge as the key to all significant problems. It is truly the age of education, not simply the education offered in schools and colleges, but education in the larger sense, including the learning of useful knowledge from all sources whatsoever. ”

“ Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger. Every one recognizes the significance of the advance in particular cases of women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the social utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the new freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights of love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable loss to the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types. ”

“ Whatever may be the philosophical rights and wrongs of individual freedom in sexual relationship, the facts of practical life are that an overwhelming majority of the most intelligent people are united in support of our established laws and customs demanding legitimacy of motherhood and birthright. As a result of this age-old stand for legitimacy, illegitimate mothers and children do not have a square deal at the bar of public opinion. Everybody knows that the vast majority of illegitimate children do not have a fair chance in the world's work. ”

“ Most of the men do not realize that prostitution offers great danger to their own health, still greater danger to the health of innocent wives and children, and a greatly shortened life for many women who are the victims of sexual slavery. Most men do not know that dark tragedies are often concealed beneath the apparent gay life of the women who are victims of sexual degradation. These are some of the things of which many young men I have known were very ignorant, and it has been no difficult task to trace a close connection between their ignorance and their vice. ”

“ A great army of women have espoused the task of raising their sex out of subjection. For such a duty the strength and energy of passion is required. Can this task be performed if the woman to any extent indulges in [83] sex—otherwise subjection to man? Sexuality debases, even reproduction and birth are regarded as 'nauseating.' Woman is not free, only because she has been the slave to the primitive cycle of emotions which belong to physical love. The renunciation, the conquest of sex—it is this that must be gained. As for man, he has been shown up, women have found him out ”

“ So reasoning, we have naturally turned to education as one, but not the only, method of attack on the sexual problems which have degraded and devitalized human life of all past times, but which somehow have kept out of the limelight of publicity until our own times. ”

“ In short, every young man should be informed that most women living by prostitution have begun innocently or unwillingly; but having made one false step, society has shunned them, even near relatives have cast them off, and a career of prostitution has appeared the only way of making a living, vulgar and unspeakably sordid though it be. It is evident that the responsibility for prostitution rests almost entirely upon men. Unfortunately, society does not recognize this fact and has no way of dealing legally with both men and women found associated in houses of prostitution. ”

“ Once more, ask these same men and women whether their early knowledge of sex came from pure and reliable sources or from vulgar playmates and depraved servants; and with rare exceptions it is found that vulgarity made the strongest impression in the first lessons concerning the great facts of life. Such being the truth, it is nonsense for parents to sit in complacency because they feel sure that their children are safely protected against any vulgar first lessons concerning sex; for no one can know that children are safely guarded from others who may corrupt their innocent minds. ”

“ Physiology and psychology of sex are fundamental; but they alone are not sufficient to complete that mutual adjustment and understanding which marriage at the full development of its possibilities involves. Matrimonial harmony cannot be entirely a problem of applied science, as some superficial devotees of science seem to think; for science can never analyze those subtle and ever-varying qualities that go to make up what we call personality, and marriage in its largest outlook is the intimate blending of two personalities. ”

“ Perhaps this has some truth, but we must remember that only in rare homes are there such ideal relationships of parents to each other and to their offspring that matters of sex are sacred to the family circle. The fact which parents and educators must face is that there are now relatively few homes in which there is one parent able to begin the elementary instruction of young children; and, therefore, as a practical matter for the best interests of the vast majority of young people, we must consider ways and means for instruction outside of most homes. ”

“ There is much such literature that gives young people inspiration, but too much of it, like college life, ends with a commencement. "And then they were married and lived happily ever after"—is the familiar closing as the novelist rings down the curtain after reciting only the prologue in the life drama of his two lovers. We need more literature that does not end with the wedding march, but which gives young people the successful solution of the problems after marriage. ”

“ Foerster, in his "Marriage and the Sex Problem," urges that self-control over sexual passions is the working of the old idea of asceticism, which he believes "should be regarded, not as a negation of nature nor as an attempt to extirpate natural forces, but as practice in the art of self-discipline. Its object should be to show humanity what the human will is capable of performing, to serve as an encouraging example of the conquest of the spirit over the animal self." My personal view is that nothing is gained by confusing self-control and the old asceticism. ”

“ So uncertain are we at present regarding how we should approach the problem of teaching grammar-school children that the only safe advice for general use is that teachers, or preferably principals, should begin with parents' conferences led by one who is a conservative expert on sex-instruction. Were I principal of a school with pupils from, say, two hundred and fifty homes, I should begin at once to organize conferences designed to awaken the parents to the need of sex-instruction for their children, and to the importance of making at least a beginning in the homes. ”

“ Occasionally I have met a strange view of life in some men and women who have grown pessimistic from revelations concerning the sexual-social problems and who think that true manhood is so rare that emphasizing it with young women will lead to ideals that can rarely be realized in actual life; and therefore, for women so influenced there will be increasing discontent and disappointment in marriage or deliberate celibacy. No doubt this is in part true, as witness the many highly educated women who have written or said that there seem to be few attractive marriageable men of their own age. ”

“ Can scientific education hope to solve the sexual problems of society by inculcating such fear of venereal diseases that men will remain true to the monogamic code of morality? Many cynical disbelievers in sex-hygiene answer this question negatively by asking in biblical phrase, "Can the leopard change his spots?" In other words, these doubting ones believe that sexual instincts are so firmly fixed in the nature of many men and some women that there is no hope of radical change through education. ”

“ I think that these professors and scientists are wasting their time, and I have written this small volume not only in order to make a plea for the younger generation as to the way in which they shall be taught sex truths, but also in order, if possible, to prove to the advanced thinkers of the day that it is not old-fashioned to beg that God may be put back into the lives of His children, but a thing of urgent and vital importance. Without faith the new generation is like a city built on sand. ”

“ To all those who see nothing in the movement because it will not solve all the sex problems which have created a demand for special instruction, we may reply by simply pointing to the fact that general education makes some better and more efficient citizens, but many times it fails to give desirable results. We believe in general education because it aims to offer all individuals help in preparation for more efficient life, although it succeeds only in part. ”

“ If there is ever a time in a boy's life when he needs intimacy with his mother, it is in the early adolescent years of twelve to fourteen. A strong mother's heart to heart guidance at that time will influence the boy more than all the sex-education which the schools and colleges combined can ever hope to offer. Such is the problem of home teaching for adolescent boys. I emphatically protest against the foolish and even dangerous idea that because a boy is beginning to metamorphose into a man his mother should cease to help him with the problems of sex. ”

“ On the side of feminism there is hope in the widespread disgust with Cristabel Pankhurst's "Plain Facts on a Great Evil" as compared with the very general approval of Louise Creighton's polished masterpiece, "The Social Evil and How to Fight It." This represents exactly the present attitude of numerous men and women who calmly discuss together the great problems of life fearlessly and without any elements of lasciviousness such as some people seem to think is necessarily associated with either unsexual or bisexual discussion of sex problems. ”

“ We must remember that education gives us keener feeling for life's pains, but it also compensates by giving soul-satisfying appreciation of its joys. So it seems reasonable to believe that while educating young women to believe in and demand a higher ideal of manhood in its natural relations to womanhood will certainly make [187] disappointments more heart-pressing for some, it will just as surely make realization the supreme happiness of others. ”

“ However sure a young woman may feel of her own power of self-control, she should not consider lightly her possible part in a chain of events which may lead men to unchastity with other women. Many a man driven into the white heat of passion by thoughtless or deliberate acts of a pure girl has gone direct to seek relief of tension in the underworld. ”

“ I take it for granted that no teacher of literature who contributes to sex-instruction will let the students know that the emphasis placed on great life problems is part of a conspiracy of parents and educators to give in the name of sex-education instruction that will help prepare the individual for facing the problems. Here, as elsewhere, the young people had better be left unaware that their elders are so interested in giving them instruction regarding sex problems that they have organized, for study of ways and means, a movement known as sex-education. ”

“ There are those to-day who claim that sexual information and problems should be thrust upon the attention of boys and girls by the teachers in the public schools, that this teaching is necessary for the protection of virtue and the prevention of disease, and that, if anyone hesitates to encourage the spread of such [222] literature and the teaching of such knowledge, he is an arrant and presumptuous blockhead. The arrogance of the extreme advocates of child hygiene blinds them to certain all-important truths. ”

“ Let us go back to the question of sex-education of the public. Silence has been the policy in the past. We have taught our children biology and natural history, we have taught them physiology, carefully [55] ignoring the organs of reproduction; we have warned the young to make use of their senses and their brains, but we have refused to recognize the very force that guides all these instincts, the vital power of sex. Yet, in the face of this stupidity, acknowledging the call of the age, girls are sent out into the industrial world, where they fight shoulder to shoulder with men. ”

“ Looking at the social evil from any point of view, it seems to me that ignorance, dense ignorance, is largely responsible for the existence of that darkest blot on our boasted civilization—the social-sexual evil. No matter how we look at the established facts regarding prostitution, they all point to the need of sexual instruction for the protection of the youth of both sexes. ”

“ Parents may be incited to do their duty in placing sex information before their children whenever conditions demand such knowledge. And principals and teachers, particularly principals, whenever they have the acuteness to detect the tendency to wrong-doing, will no longer hesitate to utter the word of warning in season. As for the extravagant claims made for the teaching of sex-hygiene, I have too much faith in the good sense of the American people to believe that it will ever be generally and regularly taught in American schools. ”

“ No doubt it is important that all intelligent men and women should know enough about sexual immorality and the life of the underworld so that they will realize the necessity of protecting young people from vice in all its forms; but this does not mean that everybody should read extensively in the mass of printed matter that sets forth the most awful details concerning human depravity. There is a real danger in this line. The sex-education movement has already brought the problems of sex out of the old-time secrecy, and no other topics of the times are so freely read and discussed. ”

“ Hence, the one essential task of sex-education in its broadest outlook is to guide natural human beings to recognition and choice of the best in the sexual sphere of life. And in so far as each coming generation of individuals may be thus guided by the larger sex-education, the problems of sex will be pragmatically solved, for the social aggregate of human life will become better, happier, nobler, truer, more in harmony with the highest ideals of life, more like our vision of perfected humanity. ”

“ Since we confess that we know so little concerning efficient methods for ethical, moral, or social teaching, it is evident that we must be far from a satisfactory plan for dealing with instruction which is intended to oppose most powerful instinctive tendencies and long-established habits of sensuality. Clearly the third aim sets no easy task for the educator; but since the possible solution of sex problems must turn on the sex actions of the individual in relation to society, the ethical-social aspects of sex-education must not be evaded because the way is not yet entirely clear. ”

“ I have in mind the need of self-control in marriage. Most writers and lecturers who emphasize the arguments for absolute self-control or continence before marriage, omit all reference to marital life. The natural inference, and one widely followed, is that the only moral duty of a young man is to control his intense desires and avoid illicit relations until sexual abandon is permitted under the license of the law and the benediction of the church. Such, I submit, is a fair conclusion for young men to draw from at least ninety per cent of the sex-education literature that is current to-day. ”