Sexual education

“ The objection need not be raised that the sexual enlightenment would not safeguard a girl, since, when she gives herself to a man, a girl knows well enough that children are the result of sexual intercourse. The objection is unsound, if we only have a right understanding of what we mean by sexual enlightenment, and if at the same time we do not neglect the general sexual education. Enlightenment should not be limited to merely making the person concerned aware of the consequences of sexual acts ”

“ 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. ”

“ He praises the older teachers, "The great educators of the past who have all been instinctively aware of this truth and have hence strongly insisted on the importance of cultivating a sense of shame; for they have realized that the chief task of sexual education is not to attract the attention of the young to sex matters, but as far as possible to distract them from it." ”

“ This applies with equal force to the matter of sexual education. We know that the sexual impulse may be excited by innumerable external stimuli. Such stimuli are continuously in operation, and the best educator has no power to exclude their influence. The mere association of the child with persons of the opposite sex provides such stimuli. ”

“ The sex-education movement both in Europe and America had its origin as an attempt to check the spread of the venereal or social diseases. The idea that education should work for sexual morality for its own sake and not simply for protection against venereal diseases has only recently begun to appear in the literature of sex-education, and so far it seems to have made only a limited impression on many of those who have been active in the prophylactic campaign against social disease. ”

“ I have seen cases in which there seemed to be a sort of mania for giving education and instruction, but in which on closer examination it appeared that the interest in the children was a sexual one. Two cases which have been reported to me show that in the case of women also opportunity very easily awakens the sexual impulse; in these cases the giving of baths to the children under their care, first definitely gave rise in two governesses to such perverse inclinations, and in one of them subsequently led to serious sexual malpractices with the children. ”

“ A knowledge of the disastrous consequences of sexual diseases must have a certain influence for good, and the grave difficulty lies only in the fact that nevertheless all the arguments which speak against the sexual education of the girls hold for the boys, too. The harm to the youthful imagination, the starting of erotic thoughts with sensual excitement in consequence of any kind of sexual instruction must be still greater for the young man than for the young woman, as he is more easily able to satisfy his desires. ”

“ Considering, as we have done, the sex problems in their many aspects, we are forced to the conclusion that sex-education will prove adequate only when it combines instruction from the several points of view. It must be much more than the sex-hygiene with which the sex-instruction movement started. We need sexual knowledge that will conserve health, that will develop social and ethical and eugenic responsibility for sexual actions, that will lead to increased happiness as well as to improved health, and that will give a nobler and purer view of life's possibilities. ”

“ Social diseases not most important.
I have given great prominence to the social-sexual diseases in their relation to sex-education because along this line there has been developed the widespread interest in sex-instruction as one method of protecting young people against promiscuity. So far as the questions of teaching are concerned, my personal view is that some of the other reasons or problems for sex-instruction are more important, because I believe that educational emphasis on them will give the greatest results in improved sexual conditions of society. ”

“ When children are properly educated, there is reason to hope that sexual matters will be less often treated in an obscene spirit than is the case to-day. Nor need we fear, when such education becomes the rule, that every allusion to sexual things may involve dangers to the child. Precisely because the sexual life will then be known to the child in a natural way, will there be less reason to dread the deliberate cultivation by children of sexual topics of conversation. ”

“ There is no denying the fact that in recent years the popular interest in sex problems has taken a dangerous turn. It is time for those who are active in the sex-education movement to note the signs of the times, for an effective educational scheme for young people must take into account the present tendency towards a dangerous interest in literature relating to sexual abnormality, especially immorality. ”

“ Of course we must avoid leading the child to dwell too much upon sexual topics, and fortunately human beings have numerous other interests. The sphere of the sexual must be regarded as a fraction merely of the general educational field. The inculcation of true ideas of morality, and of a sense of honour not confined to externals but one by which the entire being is permeated--these will be the safest essentials of a good sexual and general education. ”

“ We must educate children, boys as well as girls, in the belief that to mishandle the genital organs is forbidden alike by divine and by human law. But we must not teach them to regard the sexual act as in itself disgusting; more especially in view of the fact that such an idea conflicts with the lofty ethical significance of the act to which we all owe our existence.
What has been said about nakedness, has bearings also upon the relationships of the education of children to the matter of the nude in art. No intelligent person will deny the importance to art of the representation of the nude. ”

“ With such unbounded confidence in the [20] all-sufficiency of education, it is most natural that we should turn to it in these times when we have come to realize the existence of amazing sexual problems caused either by ignorant misuse, or by deliberate abuse, of the sexual functions which biologically are intrusted with the perpetuation of human life and which psychologically are the source of human affection in its supreme forms. If education is to solve the civic, hygienic, and industrial problems of to-day and to-morrow, why should it not also help with the age-old sexual evils? ”

“ Since there are so many people who still need the most elementary knowledge concerning the sexual problems that demand educational attack, it is important that there should be local associations which can manage lectures, publications, conferences, and other means of informing the public as to the gravity of the sexual problems of our times, and as to the part which sex-instruction may play in the attempt at finding a solution. ”

“ Our brief survey of the hygienic problems caused by sexual promiscuity and its characteristic diseases is sufficient to indicate one great problem for sex-education. Such social-hygiene problems have been most responsible for the recent and rapid rise of the movement for sex-education, and they must be recognized in any adequate scheme for instruction of young people. ”

“ These sexual problems toward whose solution special instruction of young people may help are stated here in the order in which they have attracted attention as reasons for sex-education. Thus, for instance, personal sex-hygiene was the chief reason recognized twenty years ago; social diseases began to attract public attention ten years ago; commercial prostitution has been especially prominent in the discussions of the past five years; and only recently has there been emphasis on sex-education with reference to eugenics. ”

“ In the preceding series of lectures we have surveyed eight important sex problems that can never be solved, even in part, unless by widespread information that specifically guides the individual and organized society in the adjustment of sexual instincts to the peculiar conditions that obtain in our modern civilized life. To spread the knowledge that will help civilized humanity on towards the best possible adjustment of sex and life, and therefore to a pragmatic solution of sexual problems, is the task or the chief aim of sex-education. ”

“ Second, sex-education should aim to give that knowledge of personal hygiene of the sexual organs which is of direct value in making for the most healthful and efficient life of the individual.
Third, sex-education should aim to develop personal responsibility regarding the social, ethical, psychical, and eugenic aspects of sex as affecting the individual life in its relation to other individuals of the present and future generations; in short, sex-education should consider the problems of sexual instincts and actions in relation to society. ”

“ The culminating stages of any complete scheme for formal sex-education of young people will be sex-hygiene considered in its strict sense as that special phase of sex-education which deals with problems of health, and sex-ethics which determines the responsibility of individuals for control of sexual instincts. ”

“ Fourth, sex-education should aim to teach briefly to young people, during later adolescence, the essential hygienic, social, and eugenic facts regarding the two destructive diseases which are chargeable to sexual promiscuity or immorality. ”

“ Indeed, I received numerous assurances regarding the customary sexual abstinence of American young men who had been educated in common with American girls. In many of these circles, a young man known to indulge in sexual intercourse, whether with a prostitute or in a so-called "intimacy," was immediately ostracised; and this shows that as far as the question of sexual chastity is concerned, the results of the coeducation of the sexes are at least not more unfavourable than those of the separate education of the sexes. ”

“ Sex-education must work against the idea that sexual processes are inherently vulgar, degraded, base, and impure. Such an interpretation is correct only when sexual instincts are uncontrolled and thereby out of harmony with the highest ideals of life. But control does not mean asceticism which aims at complete subjugation of sexual instincts and would annihilate them if that were biologically possible. ”

“ The reasons for sexual enlightenment may be classified under various heads; the chief of these are reasons of health, of social life, of law, morality, education, and the intellectual development.
To consider first the matter of intellectual development, we have here to think, not so much of a limitation of the intellectual growth in consequence of the sexual thoughts of the child, as of the fact that instruction in the nature of sexual processes, at least as far as the objective field is concerned, promotes the general culture. ”

“ In providing for the sexual education of the child, we have to take into account such changes of view; but we have also to consider the matter in relation to the present condition of our civilisation, for the child is to be a citizen of a real, not of an imaginary State. ”

“ We must not overlook the possibility that the marvellous progress of bacteriological and medical science may some day largely reduce the health problems of sex without improving morality. In fact, sexual immorality that is hygienic does actually exist to a limited extent. Such facts indicate that while sex-education was first planned to solve health problems, the ultimate sex-education must attempt to guide sexual conduct by moral principles. This coming need of more emphasis on the moral problems of sex should be clearly foreseen by those who are interested in sex-education. ”

“ The less that people without professional use for knowledge of sexual pathology know concerning it, the better it will be for their peace of mind and possibly for their morals. Therefore, I urge that he who enthusiastically studies the abnormalities of sex life without reference to scientific research or professional demands, is not likely to be the kind of teacher who will present abnormal life only so far as is necessary to an understanding of the perfectly normal. ”

“ Perhaps those who are seriously interested in sex-education may help stem the tide towards interest in sexual abnormality by using greater care in the selection of literature, both for young people and for their elders. I recently met a superintendent of schools who had carefully read certain large volumes on the medical, psychical, and social abnormalities of sex, and many books and pamphlets on the social evil. ”

“ The third kind of people who should not be intrusted with teaching sex-hygiene are the men and women who, without a scientific perspective, have plunged into the literature of sexual abnormality until they have come to think that knowledge concerning perverted life is an important part of [118] sex-education for young people, especially for those of post-adolescent years. I know of teachers and physicians who advise young people not much over twenty years of age to read such psychopathological works as those of Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and Freud, and various works dealing with commercialized vice. ”