Sex-education
by Maurice A. Bigelow · English · Gutenberg #31352 · 411,892 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sex-education
Author: Maurice A. Bigelow
Release date: February 22, 2010 [eBook #31352]
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Language: English
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SEX-EDUCATION
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: PRINCE A. MORROW
Chief organizer of the American movement for sex-education.
Physician, educator, author, social reformer. Born in Kentucky,
December 19, 1864. Died in New York City, March 17, 1913.
_Courtesy of Dr. A.S. Morrow._]
SEX-EDUCATION
A SERIES OF LECTURES CONCERNING
KNOWLEDGE OF SEX IN ITS RELATION
TO HUMAN LIFE
BY
MAURICE A. BIGELOW
PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL
OF PRACTICAL ARTS, TEACHERS COLLEGE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
THE MEMORY OF
DR. PRINCE A. MORROW
WHOSE GREAT FAITH IN THE ESSENTIAL GOODNESS OF HUMAN
NATURE LED HIM TO BELIEVE THAT THE PROBLEMS OF
SEX HAVE ARISEN FROM IGNORANCE AND
THAT EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO
THEIR SOLUTION
PREFATORY NOTE
Many of the lectures printed in this volume have formed the basis of a
series given at Teachers College, Columbia University, during the
summer sessions of 1914 and 1915, and during the academic year
1914-1915. Others were addressed to parents, to groups of men, to
women's clubs, and to conferences on sex-education. In order to avoid
extensive repetition, there has been some combination and rearrangement
of lectures that originally were addressed to groups of people with
widely different outlooks on the sexual problems.
Several years ago the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow announced that a volume
dealing with many of the timely topics of sex-education was to be
prepared by the undersigned with the advice and criticism of a
committee of the American Federation for Sex-Hygiene; but even before
Dr. Morrow's death it became evident that this plan was impracticable.
Three members (Morrow, Balliet, Bigelow) of the original committee
collaborated in a report presented at the XV International Congress on
Hygiene and Demography. Since that time the writer, working
independently, has found it desirable to reorganize completely the
original outline announced by Dr. Morrow.
In accordance with a declaration made voluntarily in a conversation
with Dr. Morrow, the author considers himself pledged to devote all
royalties from this book to the movement for sex-education.
Among the many persons to whom is due acknowledgment of helpfulness in
the preparation of this book, the author is especially indebted for
suggestions to the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow, to Dr. William F. Snow,
Secretary of the American Social Hygiene Association, and to Dr. Edward
L. Keyes, Jr., President of the Society of Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis; for constructive criticism, to his colleagues, Professor
Jean Broadhurst and Miss Caroline E. Stackpole, of Teachers College,
who have read carefully both the original lectures and the completed
manuscript; and to Olive Crosby Whitin (Mrs. Frederick H. Whitin),
executive secretary of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis,
who has suggested and criticized helpfully both as a reader of the
manuscript and as an auditor of many of the lectures delivered at
Teachers College.
M.A.B.
TEACHERS COLLEGE,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
December 28, 1915.
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE MEANING, NEED, AND SCOPE OF SEX-EDUCATION 1
§ 1. Sex-education and its relation to sex-hygiene and
social hygiene. § 2. The misunderstanding of sex. § 3. The
need of sex-instruction. § 4. The scope of sex-education.
II. THE PROBLEMS FOR SEX-EDUCATION 28
§ 5. Sex problems and the need of special knowledge. § 6.
First problem: Personal sex-hygiene. § 7. Second problem:
Social diseases. § 8. Third problem: Social evil. § 9.
Fourth problem: Illegitimacy. § 10. Fifth problem: Sexual
morality. § 11. Sixth problem: Sexual vulgarity. § 12.
Seventh problem: Marriage. § 13. Eighth Problem: Eugenics.
§ 14. Summary.
III. ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL ATTACK ON THE SEX PROBLEMS 90
§ 15. The task of sex-education. § 16. The aims of
sex-education. § 17. The aims as the basis of organized
sex-instruction.
IV. THE TEACHER OF SEX-KNOWLEDGE 108
§ 18. Who should give sex-instruction? § 19. The child's
first teachers of sex-knowledge. § 20. Selecting teachers
for class instruction. § 21. Certain undesirable teachers
for special hygienic and ethical instruction.
V. BOOKS AS TEACHERS CONCERNING SEX AND LIFE 121
§ 22. Value and danger of special sex-books for young
people. § 23. General literature and sex problems. § 24.
Dangers in literature on sexual abnormality.
VI. SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR PRE-ADOLESCENT YEARS 133
§ 25. Elementary instruction and influence. § 26. Hygienic
and educational treatment of unhealthful habits.
VII. SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR EARLY ADOLESCENT YEARS 146
§ 27. The biological foundations. § 28. Scientific facts
for boys. § 29. Scientific facts for girls.
VIII. SPECIAL SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR ADOLESCENT BOYS AND YOUNG MEN 156
§ 30. Developing attitude towards womanhood. § 31.
Developing ideals of love and marriage. § 32. Reasons for
pre-marital continence. § 33. Essential knowledge
concerning prostitution. § 34. Need of refinement of men.
§ 35. Dancing as a sex problem for men. § 36. Dress of women
as a sex problem for men. § 37. The problem of self-control
for young men. § 38. The mental side of a young man's
sexual life.
IX. SPECIAL INSTRUCTION FOR MATURING YOUNG WOMEN 184
§ 39. The young woman's attitude towards manhood. § 40. The
young woman's attitude towards love and marriage. § 41.
Reasons for pre-marital continence of young women. § 42.
Need of optimistic and æsthetic views of sex by women.
§ 43. Other problems for young women.
X. CRITICISMS OF SEX-EDUCATION 203
§ 44. A plea for reticence--Agnes Repplier. § 45. A plea
for religious approach--Cosmo Hamilton. § 46. The conflict
between sex-hygiene and sex-ethics--Richard Cabot § 47. The
arrogance of the advocates of sex-education--William H.
Maxwell. § 48. Lubricity in education--W.H. Taft. § 49.
Conclusions from the criticisms of sex-education.
XI. THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF THE SEX-EDUCATION MOVEMENT 227
§ 50. The American movement. § 51. Important steps. § 52.
The future of the larger sex-education.
XII. SOME BOOKS FOR SEX-EDUCATION 238
INDEX 249
I
THE MEANING, NEED, AND SCOPE OF SEX-EDUCATION
§ 1. _Sex-education and Its Relation to Sex-hygiene and Social Hygiene_
[Sidenote: Definition of sex-education.]
Sex-education in its largest sense includes all scientific, ethical,
social, and religious instruction and influence which directly and
indirectly may help young people prepare to solve for themselves the
problems of sex that inevitably come in some form into the life of
every normal human individual. Note the carefully guarded phrase "help
young people prepare to solve for themselves the problems of sex", for,
like education in general, special sex-education cannot possibly do
more than help the individual prepare to face the problems of life.
[Sidenote: More than sex-hygiene.]
Now, sex-education as thus defined is more extensive than sex-hygiene,
which term was originally applied to instruction concerning sex.
Sex-hygiene obviously refers to health as influenced by sexual
processes, and as such it is a convenient subdivision of the science of
health. It would be quite satisfactory as a name for popular
instruction concerning sex if that were strictly, or even primarily,
hygienic; but in a later lecture it will be shown that the most
desirable sex-instruction is only in a minor part a problem of hygiene.
I realize that this statement may be declared heretical by many of the
present-day advocates of sex-hygiene, because they have approached this
latest educational movement from the standpoint of physical health, and
especially because their attention has been drawn to the very common
occurrence of pathological conditions. Nevertheless, the sexual
problems of our times do not all affect physical health, which hygiene
aims to conserve; and the sex-educational movement will be quite
inadequate without great stress upon certain ethical, social, and other
aspects of sex. Young people need instruction that relates not only to
health but also to attitude and to morals as these three are influenced
by sexual instincts and relationships. This idea will be developed
later, but I anticipate here simply to suggest the point of view of the
statement that "sex-hygiene" is altogether too limited as a general
designation for the desirable instruction concerning sex. The continued
use of the term "sex-hygiene," now that the scope of the desirable
sex-instruction has been extended far beyond the accepted limits of the
science of health, is tending to cause confusion. The educational
problems will be more definite and the support of the intelligent
public more assured if we limit the use of "sex-hygiene" to the
specific problems of health as affected by sexual processes and cease
trying to make it include those phases of sex-instruction which have
nothing directly to do with health.
Two general terms, "sex-instruction" and "sex-education," are available
as all-inclusive designations of the desirable instruction concerning
any aspects of sex. They are quite free from the above objections to
"sex-hygiene," and it is highly desirable that they should be used in
all educational discussions where there is no specific reference to the
problems of health. Sex-hygiene will be used in these lectures only
when there is some direct reference to health as influenced by the
sexual functions.
[Sidenote: Social hygiene.]
Social hygiene in its complete sense means the great general movement
for the improvement of the conditions of life in all lines in which
there is social ill health or need of social reform; but it is often
limited to the sexual aspect of the unfortunate and unfavorable
conditions of life, and it has been proposed to adopt the term "social
hygiene" as a substitute that avoids the word "sex" in sex-hygiene. For
this reason it has been incorporated into the names of several
societies that are interested in sex-hygiene (_e.g._, the American
Social Hygiene Association). Probably the relation of sex-hygiene to
the so-called "social evil" has suggested the use of social hygiene in
its most limited sense. It will be unfortunate if this usage becomes so
prominent that we think of the health problems of society as chiefly
sexual, for the larger outlook of Ellis's "Task of Social Hygiene" is
desirable. Likewise, the phrase "social evil" in the sense of sexual
evil misleadingly suggests that the only evil of society is the sexual
one, but this evasive designation is being supplanted by the more
definite and franker word "prostitution."
It should be noted that "social hygiene" as a substitute for
"sex-hygiene" is narrower in that it does not include the personal
problems of health as affected by sexual processes. This is a serious
omission, for certainly all sex-hygiene taught before the later
adolescent years should be personal and not social.
[Sidenote: Phases of sex-education.]
The relation of sex-hygiene or social hygiene as a limited phase of
sex-education is shown by the following outline:
{ sex-hygiene (personal, | for sexual health
{ social) |
{ |
{ biology (including | for attitude
{ physiology) of | regarding sex,
{ reproduction | and for important
{ | scientific facts
{ |
In the broadest { heredity and eugenics | for sexual conduct
outlook, sex-education { | leading to race
(or sex-instruction) { | improvement
includes: { |
{ ethics and sociology | for sexual conduct
{ of sex |
{ |
{ psychology of sex | for sexual health
{ | and conduct
{ |
{ æsthetics of sex | for attitude
[Sidenote: Sex and reproduction.]
Since the original purpose of sex was perpetuation of plant and animal
species, and since in the study of biology the idea of sex is
illustrated and developed by examination of the reproductive processes
in various types, it has been customary for many writers on
sex-education to use the terms "sex" and "reproduction" as if they were
synonymous. This is no longer so in human life; for while reproduction
is a sexual process, sexual activities and influences are often quite
unrelated to reproduction. In fact, most of the big problems that have
made sex-education desirable, if not necessary, are problems of sex
apart from reproduction. It therefore seems clear that, while studies
of reproduction are prominent in sex-education, they should be regarded
as introductory to the problems of sex, especially for young people.
§ 2. _The Misunderstanding of Sex_
[Sidenote: Objection to word "sex."]
Some educators have expressed the wish that some one might suggest a
satisfactory substitute for the terms "sex-hygiene" and
"sex-education," omitting the word "sex." This word and its companion
"sexual" are objectionable because they are associated in the minds of
most people with vulgar interpretation of the physical aspects of the
beginning of individual life, and much of the opposition to the
proposed sex-instruction in home and schools is evidently based on the
feeling that the very word "sex" involves something inherently vulgar.
[Sidenote: Definite words necessary.]
It is probable that many decades will pass before the majority of
intelligent people cease to feel that the words "sex" and "sexual" have
had such vulgar associations that they should be kept out of our
everyday vocabulary, but I can see no hope of developing an improved
attitude towards the sexual aspect of human life if we continue to
admit that we are afraid of the necessary words. It seems to me that in
one decade there has been a great advance in that the scientific
writers and speakers on problems of sex have been using words which
definitely and directly express the desired meanings, and have avoided
the suggestive circumlocutions which characterize many modern realistic
novels. One who does not already appreciate the serious impressiveness
of cold scientific language in discussion of sexual problems should
take one of the indecently suggestive paragraphs from stories in the
most notoriously vulgar of the fifteen-cent magazines, and translate
the meaning of the paragraph into direct and definite words. The result
will be complete loss of the stealthy suggestiveness which has made
concealed sexuality so dangerously attractive to the type of mind that
revels in the modern sex-problem novels. We want no such suggestive
concealment in a scheme of sex-education, for it aims at a purer and
higher understanding of sex in human life. We must have direct and
definite and dignified scientific language, and among the necessary
words none are as essential as "sex" and "sexual." We must use them
freely if attitude towards sex is to be improved; and their dignified
and scientific usage will gradually dispel the embarrassment which many
unfortunate people now experience when these words remind them that the
perpetuation of life in all its higher forms has been intrusted to the
coöperation of two kinds, or sexes, of individuals.
Thus viewing the objections which have been raised against the use of
the word "sex" in the educational movement, I have shifted my first
stand with the opposition until now I favor the frank and dignified use
of this and similar words on appropriate occasions. I believe that
those interested in the search for solutions of the vital problems of
sex should quietly but systematically work to include the words "sex"
and "sexual" in the dignified and scientific vocabulary needed by all
people to express the newer and nobler interpretations of the
relationships between men and women.
[Sidenote: No "sex" studies.]
Of course, this does not mean that sex, either as a word or as a fact
of nature, should be over-emphasized with people who are too young to
appreciate the fundamental facts of life. As already suggested, it is
not desirable that any parts of the curricula for schools should be
known to the pupils as "sex" studies; but we need such terms as
"sex-hygiene" and "sex-instruction" to indicate to teachers and parents
that certain parts of the education of the children are being directed
towards a healthy, natural and wholesome relation to sex.
[Sidenote: "Sex" and "love."]
It is absurd to suppose that the free, dignified, and scientific use of
the word "sex" is going to make people more sensual, more uncontrolled,
and more immoral. There is much more reason for fearing the free use of
the word "love," which has both psychical and physical meanings so
confused that often only the context of sentences enables one to
determine which meaning is intended. In fact, many writers and speakers
seek to avoid all possible misunderstanding by using the word
"affection" for psychical love. Now, in spite of such confusion, and
the fact that to many people the word "love" in connection with sex
suggests only gross sensuality, we continue to use it freely and it is
one of the first words taught to children. Why then do we not hear
protests against using the word "love"? Simply because we have been
from childhood accustomed to the word, first in its psychical sense,
and it is only later that most of us have learned that it has a sensual
meaning to some people. In short, familiarity with the word "love" in
its psychical sense has bred in us a contempt for those who mistake the
physical basis of love for love in its combined physical and psychical
completeness.
[Sidenote: Meaning of sex.]
To many it is surprising to find that the word "sex" has never been
used in such degraded connections as has the word "love," and that it
has not been half so much misunderstood. There is no obvious vulgarity
in the lexicographer's definitions of the word "sex." It simply means,
as the science of biology points out so clearly, that the perpetuation
of human life, and of most other species of life, has been intrusted to
pairs of individuals which are of the two kinds commonly called the
sexes, male and female. Why nature determined that each new life in the
vast majority of species should develop from two other lives has long
been a biological puzzle, and most satisfactory of the answers given is
that bi-parental origin of new individuals allows for new combinations
of heritable qualities from two lines of descent. However, such a
biological explanation of the relation of the two sexes to double
parentage is of relatively little practical significance in present-day
human life when compared with the fact that out of the necessity for
life's perpetuation by two coöperating individuals there has grown
psychical or spiritual love with all its splendid possibilities that
are evident in ideal family life. Moreover, the influence of sex in
human life has extended far beyond the family (that is, that group of
individuals who stand related to one another as husband, wife, parents,
and children), for it is a careless observer indeed who does not note
in our daily life many social and psychical relationships of men and
women who have no mutual interests relating to the biological processes
of race perpetuation. Of course, the psychologist recognizes that far
back of the platonic contact of the sexes on social and intellectual
lines is the suppressed and primal instinct that provides physical
unions for race perpetuation. However, this is of no practical
interest, for, as a matter of fact, the primal instincts are quite
subconscious in the usual social relations between the sexes.
[Sidenote: The larger view of sex.]
There is grandeur in this view of sex as originally a provision for
perpetuation of life by two coöperating individuals, later becoming the
basis of conjugal affection of the two individuals for each other and
of their parental affection for their offspring, and finally leading to
social and intellectual comradeship of men and women meeting on terms
which are practically free from the original and biological meaning of
sex.
Instead, then, of trying to keep sex, both word and fact, in the
background of the new educational movement, I believe it is best to
work definitely for a better understanding of the part which sex plays
in human life, as outlined in the preceding paragraph. Hence, in these
lectures I shall never go aside in order to avoid either the word or
the idea of sex; on the contrary, I shall attempt to direct the
discussion so as to emphasize the larger and very modern view of the
relationship of sex and human life.
[Sidenote: The many-sided bearings of sex.]
In this first lecture I want to make it clear that the rôle of sex in
human life is vastly greater than that directly involved in sexual
activity. I shall in several lectures touch the big problems from the
standpoint of the sexual instincts as these play an important part in
social, psychical, and æsthetic life even if they are rarely exercised,
physiologically, or if, as in millions of individuals, they never come
to mean more than possibilities of sexual activity for which
opportunities in marriage do not come. I am especially anxious to avoid
the narrow viewpoint of numerous writers on sex-hygiene who seem to
overlook the fact that sexual functioning is only a prominent incident
in the cycle of sexual influences in the lives of most people. Human
life, and especially marriage, should no longer be regarded from the
mere biological point of view as for the sole purpose of reproductive
activity. It is a far more uplifting view that the conscious or
unconscious existence of the sexual instincts, with or without
occasional activity, affords the fundamental physical basis for states
of mind that may profoundly affect the whole course of life in every
normal man and woman.
Supplementary to this section on the "Misunderstanding of Sex," I
suggest the reading of Chapters I-VI of "Sex" by Geddes and Thomson,
the "Problems of Sex" by the same authors, and Chapter VI in "The
Wonder of Life" by Thomson.
§ 3. _The Need of Sex-Instruction_
[Sidenote: The old silence and the new enlightenment.]
The time-honored policy has been one of silence and mystery concerning
all things sexual. Everything in that line has long been considered
impure and degraded and, therefore, the less said and the less known,
the better, especially for young people. Such has been the almost
universal attitude of parents until within the present century, when
many have awakened to the fact that the policy of silence has been a
gigantic failure, because it has not preserved purity and innocence and
because it has allowed grave evils, both hygienic and moral, to develop
under the cloak of secrecy.
[Sidenote: 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?
Is she planning to transplant them to a deserted island where they may
grow up innocently? Or is she going to keep the children in some
cloister within whose walls there will be immunity from the
contamination of the great busy world outside? Or is she going to have
them guarded like crown princes, and if so, where are absolutely safe
guards to be found? Such are the questions which rush into the minds of
those who have studied the problem of keeping children ignorant of the
most significant facts of life. It is usually an easy matter to protect
children against smallpox and typhoid and some other diseases, but no
parent or educator has yet found out how we may be sure to keep real
live children ignorant of sex knowledge. They seem to absorb such
forbidden facts as naturally and as freely as the air they breathe.
Ask any large group of representative men--ministers, or doctors, or
teachers, or men of business, or the world's toilers--whether any of
them knew the essential facts of sexual life before they were twelve
years of age, and ninety-seven in every hundred will answer quickly in
the affirmative. Ask any large group of women, excepting those whose
girlhood has been guarded with exceptional care, and the overwhelming
majority will acknowledge that they knew the essential facts before
they were fifteen years old. 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. As an
illustration, a few years ago the mothers of a group of little girls in
one of the best-managed private schools felt that with careful
supervision both in school and home there was no danger of forbidden
knowledge reaching the children. But one day a new pupil innocently
exhibited to her mother a miniature notebook with unprintable notes on
sexual topics. The resulting investigation revealed a secret club
organized by the pupils for the purpose of passing to each member
through notebooks all newly acquired information, which had a peculiar
value because it must be kept secret from teachers and parents. That
club had been in existence during two school years. This is only a
sample case of many which have proved that if children are allowed the
freedom that developing individuality demands, their mothers must not
feel too sure that their darlings are protected against knowledge of
life, and perhaps of life in its most degraded aspects.
[Sidenote: The vital question for parents.]
Here, then, is the fact that every parent should ponder seriously:
Normal children are almost certain to get sexual information not later
than the early adolescent years, and usually from unreliable and vulgar
sources. It is, therefore, not a question whether children of school
ages should be taught the important facts of sex, but whether parents
and trained teachers rather than playmates and other unreliable persons
should be the instructors. Which will parents choose for their own
children? Thousands of intelligent parents have already faced this
question, and have decided that their children shall have early
sex-instruction in home or school or both in order that there will be
little danger of vulgar impressions taking a deep hold on child minds.
Granted, then, that children should be given some reliable instruction
concerning things sexual, who should be the teacher, what should be
taught, and when should the instruction be given? These are the
fundamental questions now being considered by the parents and educators
who have accepted sex-education as necessary. Upon the final answers to
such questions the decision of many parents will depend. I shall
attempt to answer them in later lectures.
[Sidenote: Sex mystery has prevented progress.]
The policy of maintaining mystery and secrecy concerning sex has failed
with adults even more sadly than with children. Health and morals have
suffered incalculable injury. The sexual evils of our time are not as
bad as were those of the ancient civilizations, but we have little
reason to be proud of the slight progress made. But why should we
expect the human to make progress when sexual problems have been kept
in darkness? The wonder is that, with the prevailing dark outlook on
sexual life throughout the past nineteen centuries, the world has not
developed more sexual vice. Innate animalistic appetites have tended to
lead downward, and surely the policy of silence has offered no
counteracting influence towards higher living. While religion and
ethics, by means of certain rules of conduct, have maintained certain
sexual standards, they have not kept vast numbers of humans from
falling far below those standards into utter degradation. The modern
teachers of religion and ethics have prevented general sexual
degradation, but they have failed to give human sexuality any decided
uplift. The reason for this failure is the policy of mystery and
silence. The teachers of religion and ethics have preferred to let
general and more or less abstruse rules govern conduct in sexual lines.
Until recent years there have been few sermons in which common sexual
problems have been presented so that the preacher's meaning has been
clear to all. On the contrary, there has been universal mystery and
evasion concerning the greatest facts of life.
[Sidenote: Sexual instincts offer no guidance.]
Many people have justified the mystery thrown around sexual processes
on the theory that the reproductive instincts of mature people are
sufficient guides for conduct. This involves a misunderstanding of
sexual instincts of the higher mammals which are often unscientifically
cited as models for human imitation. In these animals sexual union is
instinctively determined, because normally the sexual hunger or
excitement of both sexes is stimulated and controlled by the
physiological condition of the female at the times favorable for
fertilization (_i.e._, at the oestrual periods). For example, a pair of
dogs living in close companionship show signs of mutual sexual desires
only for a few days at the semi-annual oestrual or fertile periods of
the female. It occasionally happens that the males of various wild and
domesticated mammals exhibit signs of automatic sexual excitement
(_i.e._, not caused by the stimulus arising from the physiological
condition of the female); but in such cases of male excitement outside
of the mating or oestrual periods, the normal females invariably offer
instinctive opposition to attempted union by abnormally or
automatically excited males. Thus, directly and indirectly, there is
instinctive control and limitation of sexual union among the animals
that are most closely related to the human race.
It is biologically possible that similar conditions may have existed in
the earliest human life, but that is pure speculation and has no
bearing on the practical problems of sex in human life to-day. The fact
is that the simple physiological stimuli which produce sexual
excitement in both sexes of animals have practically no influence in
determining human sexual union. On the contrary, memory associations
consciously connected with the opposite sex, especially those
associations that are centered in affection, may at any time in the
normal individual of either human sex afford the basis for a chain of
mental states leading to sexual excitement and union. There is not, as
in the animals, instinctive dependence on the physiological conditions
that are favorable for fertilization. In fact, spontaneous
physiological demands play in civilized human life a minor part in
initiating sexual excitement. The reason why some humans seem to have
unusual sexual intensity is not so much a matter of exceptionally
strong sexuality as of susceptibility to the numerous sexual stimuli
with which modern life abounds. For this reason, a man who has formed
lewd memory associations is more susceptible to sexual stimulations,
_e.g._, by obscene pictures, vulgar words, unusual dress or actions of
women, close physical association as in dancing, and certain forms of
music. It is not at all uncommon that individuals who are
hyper-sensitive to sexually suggestive stimuli are really functionally
weak.
[Sidenote: Intelligent control only.]
It follows from the facts outlined above that instinctive control of
sexual actions applies to animals but not to human life. On the
contrary, human control must be on the basis of intelligent choice.
This means the greatest task of human life, for it requires voluntary
control of instinctive demands which are intensified by numerous
stimuli or temptations that are exclusively human. No wonder that
natural sex hunger left uncontrolled leads human beings to excesses and
degradation that no species of animals with their guiding instincts
could possibly reach.
[Sidenote: Individual responsibility.]
The absence from human life of any instinctive control of sexual
actions leaves a great responsibility on each individual whose natural
desires lead impulsively and insistently towards sexual union and must
be restrained, controlled, and directed by voluntary choice. In short,
all individuals who are intelligent beings are personally responsible
for voluntary control of their sexual desires with reference to the
ethical, social, and eugenic interests and rights of all other
individuals now and in the future.
[Sidenote: Sexual knowledge necessary.]
With such an understanding of instincts in relation to human sexual
actions, we cannot wonder that the old policy of mystery has failed so
completely. Since human beings are left to control the most powerful
appetite by intelligence, it is evident that a policy based on silence,
ignorance, and mystery must fail. The only safe and sure road to the
needed control of sexual actions is to be found in knowledge, and the
widespread recognition of this fact has led to the new movement for
general enlightenment regarding sexual processes in their various
relations to human life.
[Sidenote: Education as a solution of sex problems.]
It is not surprising that we have turned to seek an educational
solution for the problems of sex. Education has become the modern
panacea for many of our ills--hygienic, industrial, political, and
social. We have found people losing health for various reasons and we
have proposed hygienic instruction as a prophylactic. We have analyzed
many problems of the industries, and now we are beginning to seek their
solution in industrial education. 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.
With such unbounded confidence in the 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? 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.
§ 4. _The Scope of Sex-education_
[Sidenote: Sex-education is not primarily for schools.]
It is well to make clear in this first lecture that no one proposes to
limit sex-instruction to schools and colleges. We may safely leave
mathematics and writing and even reading to schools, but sex-education
will fail unless the schools can get the coöperation of the homes, the
churches, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., the W.C.T.U., the Boy Scouts, the
Camp Fire Girls, and other organizations which aim to reach young
people socially, religiously, and ethically. The part which these have
already taken in the sex-education movement is in the aggregate far
more important than what the schools have been able to accomplish.
Sex-education, then, should be understood as including all serious
instruction--no matter where or when or by whom given--which aims to
help young people face the problems that normal sexual processes bring
to every life.
[Sidenote: Sex-instruction impossible in most homes.]
In a later lecture I shall urge the importance of beginning
sex-instruction in the home. There are some parents who wish that it
were possible not only to begin but also to end it there, for they fear
that public instruction will lead to a weakening of a certain sense of
reserve and privacy that has long been considered sacred to the best
family life. 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. This need not interfere in the least with the parents who are
able and willing to give sex-instruction to the children, for the home
instruction will naturally anticipate that which the schools must give
for the pupils who are not properly instructed at home. It seems to me
to be a situation like that of children learning to read at home and
later continuing reading at school. Sex-instruction begun at home will
form the child's attitude and give him some elementary information, and
later he may profitably learn more in the same lines in the class work
of school, especially in connection with science instruction for which
few homes have facilities. Moreover, it is quite possible that one
instructed at home in childhood may gain from later school instruction
something of great social value, for we must remember that the problems
of sex which most demand attention are not individual, but social.
Hence, it may be worth while for the home-instructed individual to
learn through class instruction that people outside the home look
seriously upon knowledge concerning sexual processes, and that every
individual's life must be adjusted to other lives, that is, to society.
Summarizing, it appears that however desirable home instruction
regarding sex may be, the majority of parents are not able and willing
to undertake the work, and so the public educational system and
organizations for social and religious work should provide a scheme of
instruction which will make sure that all young people will have an
opportunity to get the most helpful information for the guidance of
their lives.
[Sidenote: Caution in school instruction.]
[Sidenote: Parents' co-operation.]
In order to gain the serious attention of those who believe themselves
unalterably opposed to school instruction regarding things sexual, I
anticipate a later discussion and mention in this connection that
there must be great caution in all attempts at school teaching that
directly touches human sexual life. It would be a dangerous experiment
to introduce sex-instruction into all schools by sudden legislation.
There must be specially trained teachers of selected personality and
tact. No existing high school has enough such teachers, and in the
grammar schools where the pupils are at the age when proper instruction
would influence them most, the problem of general class instruction is
absolutely unsolved. Only here and there in schools below the high
school has a teacher or principal of rare quality made satisfactory
experimental teaching. 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. I should expect, according to the
experience of others, that of the five hundred parents, two hundred
mothers and fifty fathers would take an interest in the conferences,
and that at least one hundred fathers too busy for meetings would
approve heartily after hearing reports from their wives. Thus, I
should try to reach the majority of homes represented in my school. 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. And finally,
after a year or two of co-working with parents, I should hope to get
permission for special talks based on nature-study and hygiene. These
talks should first be given to limited groups of pupils, preferably in
the presence of some parents who are interested and who have given
their children some home instruction. Working along such conservative
lines, I believe a tactful principal of a grammar school might succeed
in developing much of the needed instruction for pre-adolescent pupils.
[Sidenote: Instruction in high schools.]
With regard to high-school pupils, we should remember that nine-tenths
of the desirable information is already included in the biology of our
best high schools. The remaining tenth is that which connects all life
with human life; and this requires tact and exceptional skill. However,
the high schools no longer offer an insoluble problem, for many
teachers have succeeded in giving the desirable instruction to the
satisfaction of critical principals and parents.
[Sidenote: Sex-education from early childhood to maturity.]
There is a widespread impression that sex-instruction should begin with
the approach of adolescence and soon be completed. This idea is often
expressed by parents and even by prominent educators who say that the
father or teacher ought "to take the boy of thirteen aside and tell him
some things he ought to know." Still others have the same point of view
when they advocate that a physician should be called for a lecture to
high-school boys. In fact, most people who have not seriously studied
the problems of sex-education seem to believe that one concentrated
dose of sex-instruction in adolescent years is sufficient guidance for
young people.
Such limited personal instruction might suffice if sex-education were
limited to sex-hygiene. A few hygienic commands in pre-adolescent years
and one impressive talk in early puberty might teach the boy or girl
how not to interfere with health; but it is improbable that such brief
instruction will make a permanent impression which will insure hygienic
practice of the precepts laid down. If we hold that sex-hygiene is
important, then it must be drilled into the learner from several points
of view. An isolated lesson on any topic of general hygiene is of very
doubtful efficiency.
[Sidenote: Brief instruction does not fix attitude.]
The most important reason why sex-instruction should not be
concentrated in a short period of youth is that it is impossible to
exert the most desirable influence upon health, attitude, and morals
except by instruction beginning in early childhood and graded for each
period of life up to maturity. Most young people who in early
adolescence receive their first lessons from parents and teachers have
already had their attitude formed by their playmates. Even their morals
may become corrupted and their health irreparably injured several years
before puberty. The only sure pathway to health, attitude, and morals
is in beginning with young children and instructing them as gradually
as the problems of sex come forward.
[Sidenote: Sex-instruction after youth.]
The greatest possible good of sex-education will not be secured if it
stops with early adolescent years. There are many problems of sex in
relation to society, particularly in relation to monogamic marriage,
that young people should be led to consider in the late teens and early
twenties. Our sex-education system will not be completely organized
until we find ways and means for carrying the instruction by lectures,
conferences, and books beyond the years commonly occupied by
public-school education. Colleges and other higher educational
institutions may contribute somewhat to this advanced sex-instruction;
but obviously the great majority of maturing young people cannot be
reached personally except by instruction arranged in churches, the
Y.M.C.A., and the Y.W.C.A., evening schools, and other such
institutions. In many respects this proposed instruction for maturing
young people is of very great importance and deserves encouragement
such as has not yet been given by those who have written and lectured
in favor of a movement for sex-education of young people.
[Sidenote: The larger sex-education.]
In conclusion of this introductory lecture, let me say that I have
tried to suggest in a general survey that sex-education in its largest
outlook touches great problems of life in very many ways. I have also
tried to convince that it is far more than merely a school subject,
limited entirely to a curriculum extended over a few years. This is the
common misunderstanding arising from the familiar use of the word
"education." As opposed to this narrow conception, I understand
sex-education, the larger sex-education, to be a collective term
designating all organized effort, both in and out of schools, toward
instructing and influencing young people with regard to the problems of
sex. Here we have returned to the central thought of the definition
with which this lecture opened, and which I emphasize because it is the
foundation of all future lectures: The larger sex-education includes
all scientific, ethical, social, and religious instruction and
influence which in any way may help young people prepare to meet the
problems of life in relation to sex.
II
THE PROBLEMS FOR SEX-EDUCATION
§ 5. _Sex Problems and the Need of Special Knowledge_
[Sidenote: Arguments for sex-education.]
In these lectures I shall discuss the great sex problems towards the
solution of which knowledge conveyed by special education may help.
These problems offer reasons or arguments in favor of sex-education,
and I shall attempt to present them from this point of view. I shall at
the same time point out in preliminary outline how organized
instruction may apply more or less directly to the sex problems that
seem to show the need of educational attack, but in later lectures the
organization of instruction will be considered more specifically.
[Sidenote: Propagandism needed.]
In reviewing the literature that during the past decade has advocated
sex-education, it has seemed to me that there is left little
possibility of any decidedly new and important contribution to the
arguments favoring such instruction, for the whole case has been
splendidly presented by eminent writers in the fields of medicine,
biology, sociology, and ethics. It now appears that the great majority
of educators, scientists, and intelligent citizens in general have
accepted the arguments for sex-instruction, so far as they have been
informed concerning the meaning and need of the movement; and this
leads me to the belief that in the future we need not new arguments but
frequent restatements of the established facts which indicate the
importance of widespread knowledge regarding the function that is
inseparably connected with the perpetuation of life. In short, we now
need a propagandism for extending the sex-education movement among the
masses of people.
For those who have already accepted sex-education, a survey of the
facts that created a demand for sex-instruction will give a clearer
outlook on the movement. The rapid increase of interest in
sex-education has been the result of widespread dissemination of
convincing facts concerning some common disharmonies that grow out of
the sexual problems of the human race. These facts which have led to
sex-education should be kept in mind by all who wish to understand or
to play a part in the instruction of young people.
It is quite unnecessary, and still more undesirable, to recite at
length in these lectures the social, medical, and psycho-pathological
facts concerning abnormal or perverted sexual processes. Fortunately,
the educational ends may be gained by a general review that points out
the bearings of the main lines of the sexual problems, the
misunderstandings and mistakes that education may help prevent and
correct.
[Sidenote: Parents should know reasons for sex-instruction.]
It is important that the general public, especially the parents, should
understand the reasons which have induced numerous physicians,
ministers, and educators to become active advocates of systematic
sex-instruction for young people. Although the movement has made
extensive progress in the ten years of propagandic work, is probably
true that the majority of even intelligent parents are not yet
convinced that their children need sex-instruction. This is due largely
to the fact that the parents have not yet been shown the reasons why it
is now, and always has been, unsafe to allow children to gain more or
less sexual information from unreliable and vulgar sources. In fact, it
is surprising to find many parents, especially mothers, who seem unable
to grasp the idea that their "protected" children can possibly get
impure information.
There are other parents who know that their children are almost sure to
get vulgar information regarding sexual matters, and that some young
people are likely to make sexual mistakes; but they calmly look upon
such things as part of the established order of the world.
Still another type of parents who should know the reasons for
sex-instruction are those who accept the traditional idea that their
daughters must be kept "protected" and "innocent" while their sons are
free to sow a large field of "wild oats," concerning which society in
general, and such parents in particular, will care little as long as
social diseases, bastardy suits, or chronic alcoholism do not result
from the dissipations. These are the fathers and mothers who need the
most enlightenment concerning the importance of such sex-instruction as
will make clear the far-reaching consequences of "wild oat sowing."
Perhaps most such parents are ignorant, but some are simply
thoughtless. As an illustration of the latter, the editor of a
well-known magazine was recently talking with a prominent author and
made some reference to the immoral habits of young men. Their
conversation was essentially as follows: The author remarked, "I assume
that my boys will be boys and will have their fling before they settle
down and marry." The editor quickly replied, "Yes, and I presume that
you expect your boys to sow their wild oats with my daughters, and that
in return you will expect my sons to dissipate with your daughters. At
any rate, you have damnable designs on somebody's daughters." This put
on the wild-oat proposition a light which was apparently new to the
literary man, for he replied, "That is a phase of the young man's
problem which never occurred to me. It does sound startling when stated
in that personal way."
All these classes of parents who have not yet learned the facts which
point to ignorance as the cause of the abundant sexual errors of young
people and those who do not understand that sexual promiscuity or
immorality is an error of gravest significance both to the individual
and to society, should have set before them time and again some of the
startling facts which in the first five years of the American
sex-education movement were promulgated among physicians, ministers,
and educators. All such ignorant or indifferent parents will not take
an interest in the proposed sex-instruction unless they are convinced
by frank and forcible statements regarding the great need of special
safeguarding of young people.
[Sidenote: Special associations needed.]
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. Such work is now being done splendidly by the
societies named in § 51. The magnitude of the problem of reaching the
public is such that there is abundant work for numerous branches of
such societies or for local groups willing to take a part in the needed
work. As suggested elsewhere, the success of the movement for
sex-instruction of children of school ages will depend largely upon the
attitude and coöperation of parents; and hence it is important that
parents should be led to understand the reasons or arguments for
sex-instruction. In other words, they should know the problems that
indicate the importance of enlightening the rising generation
concerning the great facts of sex and life.
[Sidenote: Books for parents.]
Among the numerous publications that seem to me adapted for convincing
parents that their children need instruction, I commonly mention the
following: Lowry's "False Modesty" and "Teaching Sex Hygiene," Howard's
"Start your Child Right," Wile's "Sex Education," Galloway's "Biology
of Sex," March's "Towards Racial Health," Lyttleton's "Training of the
Young in Laws of Sex," and pamphlets by Dr. Prince Morrow. See also
pages 241-243.
[Sidenote: Knowledge needed concerning eight sex problems.]
There are eight important sex problems of our times that offer reasons
or arguments for sex-instruction, because ignorance plays a large part
in each problem. I shall state them briefly here and discuss each in
succeeding lectures: (1) Many people, especially in youth, need
hygienic knowledge concerning sexual processes as they affect personal
health. (2) There is an alarming amount of the dangerous social
diseases which are distributed chiefly by the sexual promiscuity or
immorality of many men. (3) The uncontrolled sexual passions of men
have led to enormous development of organized and commercialized
prostitution. (4) There are living to-day tens of thousands of
unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, the result of the common
sexual irresponsibility of men and the ignorance of women. (5) There is
need of more general following of a definite moral standard regarding
sexual relationships. (6) There is a prevailing unwholesome attitude of
mind concerning all sexual processes. (7) There is very general
misunderstanding of sexual life as related to healthy and happy
marriage. (8) There is need of eugenic responsibility for sexual
actions that concern future generations.
Here are the eight sexual problems of our times. Any one of them has
significance great enough to demand the attention of educators and
social reformers. One and all they point to the need of better
understanding regarding the sexual functions and their relation to
life. I shall now turn to outline the main facts concerning each of
these sexual problems so far as it seems likely that they will concern
educators and social workers. For convenience I shall use the following
brief headings: (1) Personal sex-hygiene, (2) social diseases, (3)
social evil, (4) illegitimacy, (5) sexual morality, (6) sexual
vulgarity, (7) sexual problems and marriage, (8) eugenics.
[Sidenote: Historical order.]
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.
The historical order which I follow in this lecture is not now the
order of greatest importance. For example, sexual morality (5) and
vulgarity (6) are probably of far greater significance than any of the
other sexual problems that offer arguments for sex-education.
[Sidenote: Not all sex problems concern youth.]
To avoid possible misunderstanding, let me repeat from the first
lecture the proposition that sex-education should extend in home and
school from childhood to maturity. It follows that these lectures
concerning the problems of sex that seriously affect the human race are
not all applicable as arguments for instruction in schools or for
children of school age. Some of the problems of sex point to the need
of special instruction in pre-adolescent or in adolescent years, but
some of them concern directly only those who are approaching maturity.
§ 6. _First Problem for Sex-instruction: Personal Sex-hygiene_
[Sidenote: Personal and social hygiene.]
It is convenient to group under personal sex-hygiene all hygienic
knowledge concerning sexual processes in their personal as
distinguished from their social aspects. The distinction between these
two aspects of sex-hygiene is essentially on the same basis as that
between personal and public hygiene. For example, indigestion and
overwork are matters of personal hygiene, while tuberculosis and
typhoid are problems of public hygiene because the individual case
leads through infection to disease of others. Similarly, such
individual disorders as masturbation and deranged menstruation concern
personal health directly, while venereal diseases are clearly included
in social sex-hygiene.
[Sidenote: Personal sex-hygiene needed.]
If there were no other reasons for sex-instruction, I believe that it
would be worth while to teach such hygienic knowledge of self and sex
as would guard young people against harmful habits and unhealthful care
of their sexual mechanisms; and which, moreover, would guide them
across the threshold of adolescence with some helpful understanding of
the significance of the metamorphosis. Many men and women suffer from
injured, if not ruined, health because they did not know, especially
between ten and fourteen years, the laws of personal sex-hygiene, which
concern health in ways not involving sexual relationship. Many boys and
some girls are injured both physically and mentally by the habit of
masturbation. Numerous girls are injured physically and many mentally
because they have not learned in advance the nature and hygiene of
menstruation. Many boys are injured both in mind and character because
they have no scientific guidance which helps them understand themselves
during the stormy transition from youth into manhood. Moreover, there
are certain simple hygienic commands that children under twelve should
receive from parents and teachers. In all these lines the bearings of
personal hygienic instruction are so obvious that we need not at this
time stop to consider in more detail this first reason or problem for
sex-instruction of young people.
§ 7. _Second Problem for Sex-instruction: Social Diseases_
[Sidenote: Recent publicity regarding vice and disease.]
During the past decade the general public has received some astounding
revelations concerning the enormous extent of illicit sexual
promiscuity, which is immorality according to our commonly accepted
code of morals. Along with the evidence as to the existence of
widespread promiscuity, has come the still more alarming information
from the medical profession that sexual promiscuity commonly
distributes the germs of the two highly infectious and exceedingly
destructive diseases, syphilis and gonorrhea, known in medical science
as venereal or social. When these are acquired by individuals guilty of
sexual promiscuity, they seriously and often fatally affect the victim;
but of far greater social-hygienic importance is the medical evidence
that they are very often transmitted to persons innocent of any
transgression of the moral law, especially to wives and children.
The medical revelations concerning the relation of sexual immorality to
the plague of social diseases, has come from certain eminent
physicians, notably the late Dr. Prince A. Morrow. His translation of
Fournier's "Syphilis and Marriage" (1881), his own "Social Diseases and
Marriage" (1904), and several of his pamphlets published by the
American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, have been
authoritative statements of conditions as the medical world sees them.
[Sidenote: Social diseases and immorality.]
The extent of social diseases is a fairly accurate measure of the
minimum amount of immorality, for nothing is better established in
medical science than that promiscuity in sexual relations is directly
or indirectly responsible for spread of the microörganisms which cause
the diseases. If for several generations all men and women limited
their sexual relations to monogamic marriage, and the relatively rare
cases of non-sexual and prenatal infection were treated so as to render
them non-contagious, the social diseases would probably disappear from
the human family. Such a statement is significant only in showing the
relation of social diseases to sexual promiscuity, for of course, there
is no reasonable hope that the venereal germs will ever be annihilated
by universal monogamy.
[Sidenote: Attack by education and sanitation.]
Reduction of the amount of venereal disease must depend upon (1)
hygienic and moral education which will lead people to avoid the
sources of infection and (2) sanitary and medical science which works
either by applying antiseptic or other prophylactic methods for
preventing development of the causative microörganisms, or by using
germicides for destroying those germs which have already produced
disease. Thus the educational and the sanitary attack on the social
diseases lie parallel. Both are needed, for, even with all the possible
methods of attack, the progress against these diseases will be
exceedingly slow.
Those who are interested in the facts relating to social diseases which
point to the need of sex-education as one method of prevention, are
referred to the pamphlets published by the American Society of Sanitary
and Moral Prophylaxis; Morrow's "Social Diseases and Marriage";
Creighton's "The Social Disease and How to Fight It"; Dock's "Hygiene
and Morality"; Henderson's "Education with Reference to Sex"; and
certain chapters in Warbasse's "Medical Sociology."
[Sidenote: Estimated amount of disease.]
With regard to the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements
concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of
immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much
guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books
and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per
cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at
some time infected with at least one of the social diseases. The fact
is that there is no scientific way of getting accurate statistics, for
unlike other contagious diseases, the venereal ones are kept more or
less secret, and numerous cases cannot be discovered by health
officers. All the published figures regarding the prevalence of such
diseases are merely estimates based upon the experience of certain
physicians with special groups of men, especially in hospitals. There
is no reliable scientific evidence as to the prevalence of venereal
disease in the whole mass of our American population.
[Sidenote: Education not concerned with percentages.]
However, so far as education is concerned, there is nothing to be
gained by dispute as to the possible inaccuracy of the higher
percentages,[1] for it is generally admitted that probably over fifty
per cent of the men in America and Europe become infected with
gonorrhea or syphilis, or both, one or more times during their lives,
especially in early manhood. This conservative estimate is sufficient
to show that the sexual morals of probably the majority of men are at
some time in their lives loose. There is reason to believe that with
most such men the period of moral laxity is in early manhood before
marriage, which, though not excusable, is explainable on physiological
grounds. It is important to correct the wrong impression which is now
widespread, especially among women who have read the more or less
sensational statements in certain books and magazines, that the quoted
figures on social disease mean that from fifty to ninety per cent of
all men are immoral from time to time for many years. If that were
true, the situation represented by the highest estimates would be
hopeless, and we might as well start out to adjust society to a system
of recognized sexual promiscuity. Fortunately, it is far from true, for
a great many men included in even the conservative statistics of
social disease were infected because they strayed from the moral path
very few times and in many cases only once. This fact makes the outlook
for improved sexual morals and health more hopeful, for probably the
majority of young men need help in controlling themselves for a few
years only, especially between eighteen and twenty-five.[2]
[Sidenote: Established facts.]
The reports of medical men regarding the damage done by the social
diseases are inaccurate chiefly when they attempt to state percentages
of the whole population. They are reliable when they state observed
facts, such as the following: It is now established in medical science
that (1) gonorrheal infection results in tens of thousands of cases in
complications, such as heart disease, gonorrheal rheumatism, sterility
of both men and women, blindness of infants, inflammatory diseases of
female reproductive organs, and other well-marked sequelæ of the
disease; and (2) that syphilis is responsible for a large majority of
cases of locomotor ataxia, paresis and certain types of insanity, and
also for numerous aneurisms of arteries, many apoplexies, and much
disease of liver, kidneys, and other organs. Moreover, syphilis is
charged with being the greatest race destroyer. Fournier, the great
French specialist, noted that only two children survived from a series
of ninety pregnancies of syphilitic women of the well-to-do class. It
is probably true that much less than ten per cent of syphilitized
embryos ever grow into mature men and women, and even these few
survivors are likely to carry in their bodies the germs or the "virus"
of syphilis which may affect the next generation.
[Sidenote: Social diseases admittedly dangerous.]
Such direct statements as the above may be accepted as not exaggerated.
However, it little matters in sex-education, except for the purposes of
sensational writers, whether statistics regarding the damage done by
venereal diseases are more than estimates; for it is sufficient to
remember that every physician of large experience agrees that syphilis
and gonorrhea are so common and so destructive of health and life that
they must be classed among the most dangerous diseases that now
threaten the human race. This ought to be sufficient to attract the
serious attention of every thinking man and woman.
[Sidenote: Double standard of morality.]
Thus, in general survey, we see the great problems of social-sexual
hygiene caused by diseases that are widely distributed because sexual
instincts are uncontrolled. In short, the alarming problem of the
social diseases results from masculine promiscuity or the failure of
men to adhere to the monogamic standards of morality. In other and
familiar phrasing, there is widespread acceptance and practice of the
so-called "double standard of sexual morality," a monogamic one for
respectable women and promiscuity for many of their male relatives and
friends. (See writings of Morrow, especially "The Sex Problem"; also
Creighton's "The Social Disease.")
[Sidenote: One problem for sex-education.]
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.
[Sidenote: Is sex-hygiene adequate?]
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.[3] There is something in this point of view.
It is probably true that even the most radical advocates of
sex-education do not hope to secure universal monogamy and consequent
disappearance of social diseases. A conservative and rational answer to
the above question whether sex-education can solve the problem of
social diseases, is that a large percentage of even civilized people
are not yet ready to have their most powerful instincts controlled by
scientific knowledge. Hence, there is no hope that the hygienic task of
sex-education will be finished soon after instruction becomes an
established part of general education in homes and schools. At the very
best there will be incomplete returns for the social-hygienic aspect of
sex-instruction, but already we know for a certainty that enough young
men will be influenced to make the teaching justifiable. I feel sure of
this because I have met personally many such men and my friends know
many more.
According to the investigations made by Dr. Exner, the medical
secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, a great reduction
of venereal disease has followed sex-hygienic campaigns in college
towns.
[Sidenote: Medical treatment.]
In another way hygienic teaching may reduce the amount of venereal
diseases, and that is by leading infected individuals to seek thorough
medical treatment without delay. This, of course, will render the
diseased person non-infectious to others. Physicians report that there
is now a marked movement in this direction and, moreover, that many
infected young men voluntarily seek medical examinations before
marriage.
[Sidenote: Woman's need of information.]
Even if we refuse to believe that social-hygienic teaching will protect
many young men from sexual diseases, there is the woman's need of
information to be considered. As said before, women more than men
suffer the consequences of venereal infections. Therefore, every young
woman who considers marriage should know the possibility of danger to
herself and her children, and be able to decide accordingly. Of course,
even with much knowledge she may marry the wrong man, for correct
diagnosis of social disease is not always easy; but if her confidence
is betrayed and she becomes infected, she ought to know the importance
of immediate and radical medical treatment. Let me illustrate these
statements that women should know the danger of venereal disease. One
of my college friends neglected an important legal case to travel seven
hundred miles in order to tell face to face another college friend that
she was about to marry a dangerous man. Being utterly ignorant of the
existence of sexual diseases, the girl and her mother characterized my
friend's statement by a short and ugly word, and ordered him to leave
their home instantly. The marriage occurred and some months later the
young woman went to her grave, a victim of gonorrheal salpingitis and
peritonitis.
Another case which illustrates the danger of a woman's ignorance: One
of my students of many years ago married a minister who infected her
with syphilis and kept her from medical attention until the disease
was in a highly developed stage, and even then conspired with an
inefficient doctor to keep her ignorant of the nature of the disease.
[Sidenote: The right to knowledge.]
These are not extreme cases, for any physician with large experience
knows that such things are common. Medical literature is full of such
painful recitals of venereal tragedies. It is not desirable that all
young women should know the details of such tragedies, but they should
know that dangers exist. Parents and educators will not have done their
duty until they coöperate to give all young women the protective
knowledge they have a right to demand.[4]
[Sidenote: Best people must lead.]
There is another way of looking at the possible effect of the social
side of sex-hygienic instruction. It is sure to make a decided
impression upon many young people of the type that we regard as the
best in every way. These will be the leaders of the future and they in
turn will help improve conditions. Perhaps it may all work out as the
drug problem is being solved. Widespread social and hygienic
information regarding the harmful effect of alcohol, cocaine, opium,
and other drugs has first of all impressed leading citizens; and these
are beginning to control by laws those who cannot be reached directly
by education. In some such ways those who are impressed by formal
sex-education may lend a hand in influencing many who could not be
touched directly by hygienic education.
[Sidenote: Legislation needed.]
There is no doubt that public enlightenment regarding the dangers of
social diseases will soon lead to legislation and public medical work
which will contribute greatly towards reduction of the diseases. For
example, legislation with reference to venereal disease should require
doctors to report cases to health officers, should forbid "quack"
advertising of fake "cures," should forbid sale by drug stores of
nostrums for personal treatment, should provide dispensaries and
hospitals for reliable treatment at reasonable cost, should require
medical examinations for marriage licenses and provide for such
examinations at moderate charges or at public expense, should require
certain sanitary precautions in care of eyes of new-born infants, and
should provide for discovery and treatment of congenital syphilis in
school children. These are lines in which good laws might help vastly
in the war against the social diseases. Moreover, it is obvious that
all laws which help control the social evil will work indirectly
against the social diseases.
[Sidenote: Probable results of instruction.]
In conclusion, it seems probable that popular knowledge of the social
side of sex-hygiene will reduce the amount of venereal disease (1) by
teaching some people the dangers of promiscuity, (2) by adoption of
certain sanitary precautions that lessen danger of infection, (3) by
leading people to seek competent medical aid which, while often
failing to restore the victim's health, will probably eliminate the
danger of contagion for others, and (4) by intelligent support of laws
that directly or indirectly affect the social diseases.
[Sidenote: 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.
§ 8. _Third Problem for Sex-instruction: the Social Evil_
So far as the problems of sex-education are concerned, there is nothing
to be gained by an extensive review of commercialized prostitution. It
is generally accepted that the social evil or prostitution is increased
by the common ignorance of young people of both sexes regarding the
physical and social relations of sex.
Of course, it is not true that all prostitution is due to ignorance,
for it often involves enlightened men and women. However, there seems
to be good reason for believing that large numbers of people of both
sexes might be kept out of prostitution by very simple sex-instruction.
Let us look for a moment at some facts concerning the relation of the
ignorance of the women to their entrance into the underworld, and later
consider certain reasons why many men patronize the social evil.
[Sidenote: Why women enter prostitution.]
With regard to the women victims of prostitution, it seems to be
generally accepted that economic pressure, feeble-mindedness, bad
social environment, and unguided instincts, independently or combined,
are the chief causes of their downfall. However, there is a deeper
reason why numerous women enter prostitution, for all of these factors
commonly operate because of inadequate sexual knowledge. In short,
ignorance is the fundamental cause of much prostitution on the part of
women. Many a girl with starvation wages, bad social surroundings,
sub-normal mentality, or even intense instincts is able to keep her
womanhood because she knows the awful dangers of sexual promiscuity.
For our present educational purposes, it is sufficient to point out the
opinion of competent social workers that knowledge might often
counteract the forces that lead women from virtue and down into
prostitution.
[Sidenote: Men also ignorant.]
A large number of men patronize prostitution because they are ignorant
in one or more of the following respects. Some of them have drifted
into abnormal sexual habits when they were boys, and later into illicit
relations. Some of them did not know the effect of alcoholic drinks in
leading many young men to their first immoral sexual acts. Some of them
have deliberately patronized prostitution because they have accepted as
truth the monstrous lie that sexual activity is necessary to preserve
the health of men.[5] 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.
[Sidenote: Ignorance the chief cause.]
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. The Chicago Vice Commission concluded that
"the lack of information, education and training with reference to the
function and control of the sexual instinct, and the consequences of
its abuse and perversion, appears at every point of our inquiry for
the sources of the supply of the victims of vice, either as the cause
of the perversion of children and youth or as a complication of all
other causes."[6] Of course, we dare not dream that any sex-instruction
that now seems possible will completely eradicate prostitution; but we
do know of thousands of boys and girls who have been directed to safety
by knowledge of some fundamental sexual facts.
[Sidenote: Sex plays and novels.]
Concerning presentation of the social evil by fiction and the drama,
there is much honest disagreement. My personal opinion is that little
good is done by the theater or by such publications as Reginald
Kaufmann's "House of Bondage," and Elizabeth Robin's "My Little
Sister." They all leave the unsophisticated reader with an exaggerated
and even hysterical notion that white slavery is exceedingly common and
the main cause of prostitution. Certainly the great majority of the
army of prostitutes, both public and clandestine, in America, and a
still higher percentage on the continent of Europe, did not become
novitiates of vice in prisons of prostitution.
[Sidenote: Limited reading desirable.]
It seems to me that a very limited reading regarding the social evil is
sufficient for one who is not engaged in medical or social work that
requires scientific knowledge of this darkest side of human life.
Certainly, the indiscriminate reading of vice investigations is
dangerous for many young people,--for young men because some of them
are allured into personal investigations, and for young women because
they get an exaggerated and pessimistic view of all sexual problems.
For the intelligent reader who wants the general information that every
public-spirited citizen should have, the well-known book by Jane Addams
will serve both as an outline and an encyclopedia of the social evil.
Social workers and some educators will find use for the other books
mentioned below.
Jane Addams.--"A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil."
(Macmillan).
Seligman, E.R.A. (Editor).--"The Social Evil." (Putnam.) Contains
bibliography on the subject.
Sumner, Dean W.T., and others.--"The Social Evil in Chicago."
Vice-Commission Report, 1911. Now published by the American
Social Hygiene Association. The "introduction and summary" (pp.
25-47) deserves careful reading.
Cocks, O.G.--"The Social Evil" (Association Press).
"Vigilance," a journal devoted to attacking the social evil, has
been discontinued and replaced by bulletins of the American
Social Hygiene Association, 105 West 40th Street, New York City.
§ 9. _The Fourth Problem for Sex-education: Illegitimacy_
[Sidenote: Society condemns illegitimacy.]
Most awful of all the results of the sexual mistakes of men and women
are the unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. Of course, I
know that there are well-meaning people who argue that motherhood is
the supreme fact and that the formality of a marriage ceremony is
merely a medievalism in our laws and customs; but the inexorable truth
remains that our modern social system is centered around the home which
is strictly regulated by church and state and public opinion.[7]
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.
Professor Cattell, in _Science_, March, 1914, points out that since
illegitimates occur one in every twenty-five births in the United
States, and since they are on the whole equal to other children in
mentality, there ought to be forty of them among the thousand leading
men of science designated in the directory of the "American Men of
Science;" but none are known. The conclusion must be that illegitimate
children do not have an equal chance at education which leads to
prominence in science. But it is not simply a matter of limited
education, for in every way the fate of most illegitimate children is
usually pitiful. Only now and then one born under a lucky star is
adopted and educated by large-minded foster parents who recognize that
the illegitimate is not responsible for having come into this world
under conditions opposed to the best interests of society.
[Sidenote: Ignorance the cause.]
It seems to be generally accepted that in the vast majority of cases,
unmarried mothers and illegitimate children are due to ignorance of the
women. Women who are professionally immoral do not bear many
children.[8] In fact, excepting the feeble-minded prostitutes, the
general rule is that those who are mothers have only one child and that
one the result of the first sexual errors. It is a safe general
conclusion that ignorance of sexual laws is responsible for the great
majority of cases of illegitimacy.
Edith Livingston Smith, of Boston, in an article on "Unmarried Mothers"
in _Harper's Weekly_ for September 6, 1913, expressed views of the
causes of illegitimacy that many a social worker will indorse heartily:
"I see shop girls and waitresses, factory girls and maids, chorus
girls, stenographers, and governesses, each with a different
story, each with the same terror of the consequences of their
folly. 'I never knew,' they tell me, 'I never knew there were such
temptations.'...
"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 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. Here they find potential worth of their
individualities; here they meet with the same--no
greater--temptation than their brothers, but with no knowledge to
guide them, no traditions to give them poise, no ameliorating
factor of social tenderness or tolerance when inexperience fails
to temper their emotions and their femininity....
"A girl's protection must come from without, a boy's from within.
Every boy who reaches the age of adolescence knows his nature. It
asserts itself. His sex instincts are dominant, aggressive. He is
man, the father of the race, and the laws of procreation are to
him an open book. A girl stays innocent until she is awakened. It
is the kiss, the touch, the senses stirred, that make her, in the
glory of her womanhood or in her shame, acknowledge her sex.
"The very frailty of such a girl, her dependence upon her
intuitions and emotions, the triumph of feeling over intellect,
place her in greater danger than her brothers, even were their
responsibility to society the same. But, add to this the fact that
in yielding to sexual temptation she has the burden of
child-bearing--how much more necessary that she should have some
knowledge of what she is to meet in the world, or what she must
combat, lest her emotions forestall her intelligence as physical
development precedes mental appreciation."
[Sidenote: Men also ignorant.]
Illegitimacy is often due to ignorance of men as well as of women.
Prominent physicians have cited from their notebooks cases of
"protected" children in early adolescence who instinctively entered
into sexual relationship in utter ignorance of the natural result. Such
cases where the boy is entirely ignorant must be very rare; but there
are probably many boys who do not really understand that the sexual act
is very likely to lead to a ruined life for the girl companion and her
offspring. Arthur Donnithorne, in "Adam Bede," did not forecast that
his act would lead to the ruin of Hetty Sorrel and her condemnation for
infanticide.
[Sidenote: More than biology needed.]
It is obvious that something more than the ordinary biological facts of
reproduction must be included in sex-instruction that tries to prevent
such tragedies. In another lecture we shall consider moral teaching,
but here let us look at the cold facts of life that ought to be taught
at some appropriate time to young people. Not only should they know the
simple biological probability that sexual relationship will lead to
reproduction, but they should be led to consider the relentless
consequences of illegitimate propagation. On this latter point general
literature, _e.g._, "Adam Bede" and "The Scarlet Letter," teaches some
impressive lessons.
Another point needs emphasis with the numerous young people, especially
men, who are not controlled by moral laws, who know the probabilities
of illegitimacy occurring, but who have acquired the popular
impression that the order of nature is easily changed. Many physicians
and social workers know girls who have gone down because they were
persuaded to trust the efficiency of popular ways and means of avoiding
the natural outcome of the sexual act. Hence, young people of both
sexes should somehow learn that under the conditions that usually
attend illicit union there is always a strong probability that the ways
of nature cannot be easily circumvented. It is unlawful to explain,
except to medical audiences, why this is so; but much illegitimacy will
be prevented if it can be made widely known among young men and women
that, according to reliable physicians, tragedies of illegitimacy are
often due to misplaced confidence in popular methods of contraception.
[Sidenote: Criminal operations.]
There is yet another line of information that if widely known might
have some bearing on the problem of illicit sexual relations:
Physicians and social workers report that many young men and some women
know the possibility of illegitimate pregnancy, but feel safe because
they know the addresses of doctors and midwives who will perform
criminal operations. The great danger of the operation, especially at
the hands of such third-class doctors as would attempt to terminate
pregnancy criminally, should be widely known by the general public,
which only now and then gets a hint in the newspaper reports of a
tragedy involving some unfortunate girl.
[Sidenote: Relative passion of men and women.]
There is the widespread misunderstanding among young men that sexual
hunger is as insistent in virtuous young women as in themselves and
that therefore illicit gratification is a mutual gain and
responsibility. Some young men may be guided by the information that
there is much reliable evidence indicating that, while an innate
tendency towards general emotions of affection is strong in the average
young woman, there is general absence of the localized passions that
naturally and automatically develop in young men. In other words, the
first definite sexual temptation is likely to come to a young woman
from outside herself, and young men should be impressed with their
responsibility for allowing even the beginning of situations that may
arouse dormant but dangerous instincts.
§ 10. _The Fifth Problem for Sex-education: Sexual Morality_
In this lecture I shall set forth the proposition that a definitely
organized scheme of education should aim directly at making young
people strict adherents of the established code of sexual morality. For
brevity, I shall occasionally speak of morality and immorality,
omitting the qualifying word "sexual."
[Sidenote: Definition of sexual morality.]
This lecture, in fact this entire series of lectures on sex-education,
is based on the fundamental proposition that sexual morality demands
that sexual union be restricted to monogamic marriage, and conversely,
that such sexual relation outside of marriage is immoral. Such a
definition of sexual morality is accepted by church and state and the
chief citizens in every civilized country. It is the only practical
definition which is satisfactory to the vast majority of educated
American men and women, even to those who believe in freedom of divorce
and in forgiveness for youthful transgressions of the accepted moral
code. Sexual morality has had changeable standards, and in other times
and countries custom has made polygamy and promiscuity acceptable as
moral; but the monogamic ideal of morality now prevails in the world's
best life.
[Sidenote: Morality in America and Europe.]
Monogamic morality as a protection for family life means much more in
America than in Europe. It is true that there is an astounding amount
of prostitution in America, but we should be grateful that our ideals
of the monogamic family have not been seriously influenced and seem to
be slowly but surely improving among our best people. As illustrations
of our adherence to monogamic law, let me give some facts for
comparison of America and continental Europe. In America, illegitimate
births are not accurately reported but are probably less than five per
cent of the total number for the whole country. Locally the proportion
is often very much higher. Thus in Washington, D.C., where (1914) over
ten thousand, chiefly negroes, live in alleys between the streets and
under extremely unhygienic and immoral conditions, fifty per cent of
the children are illegitimate, while but twenty per cent of the colored
children born of mothers living outside the alleys, and less than
eleven per cent of the total born of all races in the city are
illegitimate. In various small American regions with a white population
the proportion of illegitimacy is astoundingly high, but the average
for the entire country is hopefully low. In many German towns
statistics show above twenty-five per cent, and in the whole empire,
more than half the legitimate first-born children are conceived before
marriage. All writers, the German ones included, seem to agree that the
majority of Teutonic men and women enter into free unions before
marriage and public opinion does not severely condemn.
In many rural districts of England, France, and Sweden, and even in
London and Paris, a large percentage of the marriages are simply
legalization of free unions. In short, in all these countries the
monogamic ideal is not followed by a large percentage of people. It
must be remembered that the great majority of people involved in the
above figures are of the peasant and laboring classes; conditions are
quite different among women of the educated classes. These must
ultimately set the moral standards for the masses.
Our American conditions are quite different, especially outside of the
large cosmopolitan cities. It is impossible not to believe in the moral
integrity of the great majority of unmarried women in America.
Certainly even in our worst communities we have no such general
immorality of women as above European figures suggest. Perhaps
wholesale prostitution in which one public woman may be the mistress of
ten, twenty, or even fifty men, may tend to protect any equal number of
American women; whereas in Europe a peasant woman would probably be for
a time the paramour of one man, thus tending to make equal numbers of
immoral men and women.
However, it matters nothing for our present purposes what may be the
explanation of conditions of sexual promiscuity here or abroad. The one
great fact is that our national code of morality is a monogamic one,
approved as ideal even by many of those who fail to live strictly in
harmony with its dictates. Hence, all Americans who are prominently
interested in sex-education believe that it should aim to make our
young people more ready to accept and understand morality according to
the monogamic ideal.
Those who are interested in this problem of morality as related to
marriage should read Foerster's "Marriage and the Sex Problem."
[Sidenote: Relation of sex-hygiene and ethics.]
Among those who see the need of teaching sex-ethics as a part of the
larger outlook of sex-education, there are two points of view: (1)
those who favor the teaching of sex-ethics with the hope of preventing
the hygienic problems arising from immorality, and (2) those who
believe in sexual morality for its own sake or as an accepted code of
conduct.
The founders of the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis
placed sanitation first in the name and stated in the constitution that
"the object of this Society is to limit the spread of diseases which
have their origin in the Social Evil. It proposes to study every means,
sanitary, moral, and administrative, which promise to be most effective
for this purpose." Most of the papers that have been read at the
meetings of the Society have emphasized the sanitary aim as primary,
and the moral aim as a means to the hygienic end; but in the past three
years there has been a decided tendency towards placing emphasis upon
morality, and recently the executive committee of the Society voted to
propose the following revised statement: "The aim of this Society is to
promote the appreciation of the sacredness of human sexual relation,
and thereby to minimize the moral and physical evils resulting from
ignorance and vice." This change of emphasis is well expressed in
President Keyes's report to the Society (_Journal_, Vol. V, No. 1).
As to the relation between sex-hygiene and sex-ethics as phases of the
larger sex-education, there has been much discussion. Several writers
have contended that there is some conflict between sanitary and moral
ends, but have failed to convince most readers that hygiene and ethics
should not be associated in teaching. In fact, the most impressive
sex-hygiene is that relating to social disease, and its value is
chiefly in the ethical appeal for protection of innocent wives and
children.
[Sidenote: Dr. Cabot's view.]
Most prominent of those who have declared that hygienic and moral
teaching should be dissociated is Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Boston. I
shall discuss his point of view in connection with a later lecture on
"Criticisms of Sex-education" (§ 46). In the present discussion of
sexual morality as an important reason for sex-education, it is
sufficient to say that Dr. Cabot seems to disagree with other teachers
on the question of the influence of formal instruction on the morals of
people.
[Sidenote: Moral and hygienic problems.]
Sex-education is now commonly understood to be attempting to solve the
moral as well as the hygienic problems of sex. As suggested before,
these two lines of problems are clearly related but not coincident; for
sexual health and morals are not entirely coördinated. 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.
[Sidenote: Super-morality desirable.]
Now, while sexual morality as commonly understood is a direct aim of
sex-education, it is not, in the opinion of many people, the ideal and
ultimate goal of sex-education in its broadest outlook. There is
something higher than conventional morality for the reason that, while
natural sexual union in monogamic marriage is never legally or
ecclesiastically immoral, it is very often far from ideal. It is not
ideal if it is unethical, unhygienic, or unæsthetic. It is unethical,
if it is not a bi-personal desideratum (_i.e._, based on mutual
love[9]); it is unhygienic when not promotive and conservative of
health; and it is unæsthetic if the concomitant psychical reactions are
not in harmony with the beautiful in nature and life. In all these
ways, morality as commonly and legally and ecclesiastically understood
may fall very far short of the ideal sexual relationships. Such an
ideal is now held by many men and women who wish that morality might
mean to all the world not simply the limitation of sexual union to
monogamic marriage, but also that it might be made to mean an
all-satisfying monogamic affection and comradeship based on certain
physiological, psychical, æsthetic, and ethical laws that underlie
human sexual potentialities. Such would be a morality so far beyond
the accepted standards that for convenience we may call it
super-morality, or the new morality. This, I sincerely believe, is the
ultimate goal of sex-education in its largest outlook.
[Sidenote: Super-morality deserves emphasis.]
Among those who have contributed to the sex-education movement there
are none who have properly emphasized this super-morality, which, I
believe, is the ultimate goal of the larger sex-education for the most
enlightened people. The definition that sex-education means all
instruction which aims to help young people prepare to solve for
themselves the sexual problems that inevitably come to every normal
individual, is broad enough to include all questions of hygiene,
morality, and super-morality that may come into one's life. The third
aim of sex-education (§ 16) which refers to the "social, ethical, and
psychical aspects of sex as affecting the individual life in relation
to other individuals," should be understood as meaning first a stand
for morality and then, this having been attained, super-morality is an
easy stage forward. The same idea was touched by the writer in a paper
on "Biology in Sex-Instruction" (_Journal of Society of Sanitary and
Moral Prophylaxis_, October, 1911) in these words: "If the great
questions of sex relationship are ever satisfactorily solved, it must
be through the direct application of the four sciences which are
centered around human life, namely, psychology, ethics, sociology, and
last, but far from least, æsthetics. As we have seen, biology teaches
much directly bearing on the purely physical aspects of the
perpetuation of human life, and its study is absolutely necessary for
mental attitude and basal facts; but the keystone of the arch of
sex-education must be contributed by these four sciences which touch
human life much deeper than the merely physical, to which the science
of biology is limited. Above all we must look to these sciences for the
solution of the problems of sex in relation to society, which more than
any physical ills have led to our present problems concerning sexual
disharmonies."
[Sidenote: Super-morality not for the masses.]
But while there is something attractive in this larger interpretation
of sex-education as looking forward to the highest adaptation of sex
and life, I realize that as a practical matter we must first of all
work with young people for sexual morality as defined by the accepted
code. We must remember that the vast majority of people are not yet
ready, and will not soon be ready, for a code of super-morality.
Confusion might result from an attempt at wholesale teaching of such
idealism of sex relationship. Certainly, so far as sex-education aims
to help immature young people, there is nothing to do but hold up
monogamic marriage as the basis of our accepted morality; but the
higher view of super-morality should be promulgated as rapidly as
possible among people who are advanced enough to understand that
morality as defined by church and state is not the best interpretation
of life's possibilities. To many it is a significant fact that we now
find numerous young men and women ready to stand for super-morality as
a foundation for monogamic marriage. Fortunately, such individuals need
not wait for the world to grasp the idea of super-morals; and already
there is many a home in which the higher view of life and sex prevails.
[Sidenote: Cautious teaching concerning immorality.]
Immorality in sexual lines should not be overstressed when teaching
young people. Rather should there be emphasis on the moral, the normal,
the healthful, the helpful, and the æsthetic processes in human life.
We should emphasize sexual health and morals, not disease and
immorality. Concerning immoral living in general, young people should
know only enough for necessary warning. Curiosity derived from
extensive knowledge of immorality has drawn many a young man into the
whirlpool of sexual depravity. It is beyond question that in sexual
lines there is the danger that Pope saw when he declared that vice is a
monster that seen too oft, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Sex-education should guard against such dangerous familiarity with
vice.
§ 11. _The Sixth Problem for Sex-education: Sexual Vulgarity_
[Sidenote: Present attitude.]
Even a limited study of the prevailing attitude towards sex and
reproduction convinces one that back of the greatest sexual problems of
our times is the almost universal secrecy, disrespect, vulgarity, and
irreverence concerning every aspect of sex and reproduction. Even
expectant motherhood is commonly concealed as long as possible, and all
reference to the developing new life is usually accompanied with
blushes and tones suggestive of some great shame. Nothing sexual is
commonly regarded as sacred. Love and marriage, motherhood and birth,
are all freely selected as themes for sexual jests, many of them so
vulgar that no printed dictionary supplies the necessary words. And I
am not simply referring to the great masses of uneducated people, for
the saddest fact is that a very large proportion of intelligent people
have not an open-minded and respectful attitude concerning sex and
reproduction.
[Sidenote: Vast change of attitude needed.]
Now, unless we can devise some way to counteract the prevailing narrow,
vulgar, disrespectful, and irreverent attitude towards all aspects of
sex and reproduction; unless we can make people see sexual processes in
all their normal aspects as noble, beautiful, and splendid steps in the
great plan of nature; unless we can substitute a philosophical and
æsthetic view of sex relationship for the time-worn interpretation of
everything sexual as inherently vulgar, base, ignoble, and demanding
asceticism for those who would reach the highest spiritual development;
unless we can begin to make these changes in the prevailing attitude
towards sex and reproduction, we cannot make any decided advance in the
attempt to help solve sexual problems by special instruction.
First of all, sex-education must work for a purified and dignified
attitude which sees vulgarity and impurity only when the functions of
sex have been voluntarily and knowingly misused and thereby debased.
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 early
Christians, disgusted with the sexual degradation of the paganistic and
materialistic Romans, preached a doctrine of sexual asceticism as the
ideal for those who would rise to the heights of spiritual life. This
pessimistic interpretation of the relation of sex and life has
persisted even in some ecclesiastical teachings of the twentieth
century, and probably has had not a little responsibility for the
widely accepted and depressing view that sex is a necessary but
regrettable fact of human life.
[Sidenote: Attitude changing.]
Fortunately, the old ascetic point of view is passing rapidly.
Nineteenth-century science has given us a nobler view of the physical
world. Scientifically considered, matter is no longer base and
degraded. Especially has the biological science of the past fifty years
made _living_ matter and its activities profoundly impressive. And of
the life-activities none are so significant and so all-important as
those relating to the perpetuation of the human species. Biological
science has taught this emphatically, and the processes connected with
sex have been lifted to a place of dignity and purity.
[Sidenote: Æsthetic attitude desirable.]
The old asceticism, with its uniformly dark outlook on life, has no
lessons worth while in our modern problems relating to sex.[10] We need
severe control and not annihilation of our most powerful instincts. The
bright outlook of æsthetics rather than the dark one of asceticism
should prevail, for sex-instincts and processes are essentially pure
and beautiful phases of that wonderful something we call "life."
Sex-education should aim to give this attitude by presenting life as
fundamentally free from the degradation arising from misuse and
misunderstanding of sex.
[Sidenote: Not a new ideal.]
The æsthetic interpretation of sex is no new ideal. Canon Lyttleton,
formerly Head Master of Eton College and later Canon of Westminster,
believed that "viewed rightly, the subject of sex, the ever-recurring
miracle of generation and birth, is full of nobleness, purity, and
health." The late Dr. Prince A. Morrow wrote, "the sex function is
intimately connected with the physical, mental, and moral development.
Its right use is the surest basis of individual health, happiness and
usefulness in life, as well as of racial permanence and prosperity. Its
abuse and misuse is the cause of a vast deal of disease and misery."
And finally, we may quote President-Emeritus Eliot of Harvard
University: "Society must be relieved by sound instruction of the
horrible doctrine that the begetting and bearing of children are in the
slightest degree sinful or foul processes. That doctrine lies at the
root of the feeling of shame in connection with these processes and of
the desire for secrecy. The plain fact is that there is nothing so
sacred and propitious on earth as the bringing of another normal child
into the world in marriage. There is nothing staining or defiling about
it, and therefore there is no need for shame or secrecy, but only for
pride and joy. This doctrine should be part of the instruction given to
all young people."
[Sidenote: Attitude all-important in sex-education.]
If sex-education succeeds in giving young people this enlightened
attitude, there will be little difficulty in solving most of the
ethical and hygienic problems of sex. A young man who has caught a
glimpse of the highest interpretation of sex in its relation to human
life, in short a young man to whom all natural sexual processes are
essentially pure and noble and beautiful, is not one who will make
grave hygienic mistakes in his own life, and he will not be personally
connected with the social evil and its diseases, and he will avoid
almost intuitively the physiologic and psychologic mistakes that most
often cause matrimonial disaster. Everything, then, in successful
sex-education depends upon the attitude formed in the minds of
learners; and towards this our major efforts should be directed.
[Sidenote: Comparison with animals not helpful.]
The prevailing vulgar attitude towards sex will not be greatly improved
by repeated emphasis upon the animal nature of reproduction in attempts
at supporting the thesis that propagation is the sole function of
sexual processes in human life. Such an interpretation of human
sexuality as purely animalistic in function is implied, if not
expressed, by some workers for the "purity" movement. I sincerely
believe that such a view will inevitably tend to increase the feeling
that sexual processes are heritages from the beasts which unfortunately
must be tolerated because nature has provided no other way for
perpetuating human life.
[Sidenote: Sexual pessimism.]
An intelligent woman, a happy wife and mother, who had accepted this
ascetic and pessimistic view of sex, said the other day: "Oh, love and
marriage and motherhood would be so beautiful were it possible to
escape the unspeakably vulgar facts of physical life!" Poor woman! It
must have been some fiend incarnate who in the guise of a prophet of
purity preached to her the animalistic interpretation of sex, which
made her overlook the fact that the very beauty which she could not
quite grasp had its origin in her emotions arising from the despised
sexual nature.
This is not an isolated case. Several young women who have graduated
from college within ten years vouch for the statement that many
thoughtful students are strong in the belief that ideal marriage is
platonic friendship and that it is a sad fact of life that husband and
wife must lay aside their high ideals in order to become parents.
Such depressing interpretations of life are bound to come from the
radical type of "purity" preaching based on the sexual mistakes of the
past and on the lives of animals. A similar pessimistic view regarding
the function of eating might be based on mistakes of drunkards and
gluttons and on the habits of the porcine family. If these are to guide
our conduct, then food-taking is to be regarded as a necessary but
vulgar habit inherited from our animal ancestors; and if we are to be
logical and attempt to rise to ideal purity in eating, we must hasten
to dispense with the culinary science and all the æsthetics which have
made civilized eating a fine art. Of course, this is just what the
strict ascetic does; but such radical disbelievers in the pleasures
that we have associated with eating would be declared lunatics in any
civilized country.
[Sidenote: Two kinds of hunger.]
I have chosen eating for illustrating my point, for the demands for
food and for sexual activity are the two primal and necessary forms of
hunger. The hunger for food has led to the refinements of civilized
dining, but there has been great evolution. The animals feed (German,
fressen) in order to satisfy hunger only; civilized humans eat (essen)
not only to satisfy the hunger appetite inherited from the animals, but
also for the sake of the concomitant social æsthetic pleasures that add
much to the joy of living. Now, if we are logical, we must interpret on
parallel lines the sexual hunger that is necessary for the perpetuation
of human life. Like eating, it is a necessary function inherited from
the animals; but there has been an evolution of greater significance.
In the animal world, sexual activity has only one function,
reproduction; but human life at its highest has superadded psychical
and social meaning to sexual relationships, and the result has been
affection and the human family. If we reject this higher view of the
double significance of sexuality in human life, and insist that only
the necessary propagative function is worthy of recognition, it is
almost inevitable that most people will continue to accept the hopeless
view that human sexuality is on the same vulgar plane as that of the
animals; in short, that it is only an animal function. This, I insist,
is a depressing interpretation that will never help overcome the
prevailing vulgar attitude toward sex.
[Sidenote: Human sexuality more than animal.]
It is only by frankly recognizing and developing the psychical and
æsthetic meanings that are distinctly human and superadded to the
merely propagative function of the animals, that people can be led far
away from the vulgar outlook on sex and reproduction in human life.
[Sidenote: Relation of attitude and morality.]
There is no question that wholesome attitude towards sex and
reproduction is closely associated with the problems of sexual
morality, and especially so far as educational procedure is concerned.
It is true that large numbers of moral people hold the vulgar attitude
towards sex and reproduction; but for people who do not accept the
moral code without question there is probably no better way of teaching
sexual morality than by influencing the individual's attitude. There
are many people who stand for sexual morality for no other reason than
that they have a dignified and æsthetic attitude towards sex.
[Sidenote: Sexual vulgarity a stage in evolution.]
There is much evidence that the world is rapidly improving in this
respect. Sexual vulgarity seems to represent a stage in the evolution
of human life from the barbaric to the fully civilized. The sexual
vulgarity of primitive peoples, both ancient and modern, has been all
too frequently recalled by writers whose pseudo-scientific
superficiality leads them to believe that knowledge concerning barbaric
and ultra-bestial sensuality will help solve modern sex problems. In
the classical days when Venus and Bacchus and other deities of
sensuality were worshipped by their devotees, there was sexual
vulgarity in action and language such as now exists only among the most
ignorant or depraved people in civilized lands. The advent of Christian
civilization in Europe left no place for temples and worship of
sensuality, but still the age-old tendency towards a crude and
barbaric kind of sexual vulgarity and obscenity has continued in
folklore, in colloquial language, and in literature. However, there has
been a vast change in the attitude of the best people within the last
two centuries. Once many English writers, many of them now deservedly
obscure, published prose and poetry that would now be criminal. An
unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare's "Complete Works," or of
Boccaccio's "Decameron," could not be circulated through the United
States mails, and there are many good people who are asking how long we
shall continue to allow the unexpurgated "Old Testament" the privilege
of circulation. It is not simply prose and poetry that has been
purified. Scientific literature has shown the influence of the reaction
against obscenity. Linnæus and other naturalists of the past were fond
of giving scientific names that perpetuated vulgar comparisons with
sexual organs, but no naturalist of the present day would dare suggest
such designations for unnamed animals and plants. The older medical
literature contains abundant obscenities; but scientific dignity, as
well as the refinement of modern medical writers, has tended to compel
the elimination of vulgarity. However, there are still too many
physicians, especially those working with venereal and genito-urinary
diseases, who go out of their way to illuminate their conversations,
lectures, books, and magazine articles with veiled vulgarity. Even
high-class medical journals occasionally contain illustrations of this
tendency. However, the medical profession as a class stands for
dignified scientific presentation of facts, and obscenity will soon be
tabooed in medical and all other reputable literature. Save for
occasional emanations privately printed by and for degenerate persons,
public obscenity will soon be unknown. Its complete disappearance will
have a vast influence upon the problem of sexual attitude.
§ 12. _The Seventh Problem for Sex-instruction: Marriage_
[Sidenote: Physiology and psychology of marriage.]
It is the consensus of opinion of numerous physicians, ministers, and
lawyers that a very large proportion of matrimonial disharmonies have
their foundation in the common misunderstanding of the physiology and
especially of the psychology of sex. In the opinion of many students of
sexual problems, this is the strongest reason for sex-instruction. It
is certainly a line in which limited spread of information has already
given some definite and satisfactory results. Many of my friends and
former students have helped me accumulate a long list of cases in which
scientific knowledge regarding sex has prevented and corrected
matrimonial disagreements; and having easily found so much definite
influence of sex-science upon marriage, I am forced to believe that
sex-instruction specially organized for people of marriageable age is
already giving results of tremendous importance to very many
individuals. Large numbers of young people are already awake to the
need of scientific guidance in marriage, and there is a great demand
for helpful information.
Advanced sex-instruction with reference to the problems of marriage
need not wait for general establishment of elementary instruction for
children of school ages. Lectures and books are already reaching large
numbers of adults. Such enlightenment will help in two ways, by the
influence on marriage and by preparing adults to teach children.
[Sidenote: Other knowledge needed.]
There is another side to the problem of marriage that points to need of
the larger sex-education. 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. Psychological and physiological knowledge will
undoubtedly help the two married individuals in their progress towards
the harmonious adjustment of their individualities; but there are many
little, but often serious, problems that the physiology and psychology
of sex cannot solve. They are problems that involve mutual affection,
comradeship, sympathy, unselfishness, coöperation, kindliness, and
devotion of husband and wife. Obviously, these can never be developed
by any formal instruction.
[Sidenote: Helpful literature.]
Probably there is no better way to help young people realize the
possibilities of matrimonial harmony than by suggesting wholesome
literature. Some of this is a part of the world's general treasure of
books that in prose and poetry, in history and romance, hold up a high
ideal of love with marriage. 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. Some such is available in history and biography; some in
essays. As I write there come to my mind several books that have
impressed me: Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer";
Leonard Huxley's "Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley," which gives many
intimate glimpses of the ideal home life which the great biologist
centered around Mrs. Huxley; William George Jordan's "Little Problems
of Married Life"; Orrin Cock's "Engagement and Marriage"; and that much
misunderstood[11] but helpful book "Love and Marriage" by Ellen Key.
Many of the stories by Virginia Terhune Van de Water, published in the
magazines and collected in a book entitled "Why I Left my Husband"
(Moffatt, Yard), deal with real problems of married life.
[Sidenote: Similar education of the sexes.]
The problems of co-education and coördinate education have not a little
bearing on the adjustment of the two sexes in marriage. In these days
when vocational education is fashionable in theory and is attracting
attention in practice, we are told that co-education and coördinate
education are mistakes because they provide the same training for both
sexes. We are told that girls must be educated for their vocation of
home-making, while boys must be educated for business, trades, or
professions. Everywhere in this current movement for vocational
education we find the emphasis placed on making education for the two
sexes just as dissimilar as possible. Fortunately for the educational
adjustments of the two sexes to each other, much of the present-day
discussion that demands extensive sex specialization of education
cannot be made practical and the training of the two sexes will
inevitably continue to be quite similar, with at most a limited amount
of time spent on application of certain knowledge to practical ends
that are chiefly of interest to one sex only. By far the greater part
of education from kindergarten through the university is in the nature
of the fundamentals of knowledge and will continue to be essentially
similar for both sexes. For illustration, the writer happens to be
connected with a college which offers a four-year course and graduate
work specially arranged with reference to household arts. Surely here
is an opportunity for education far different from that of the typical
college for men. As a matter of fact, there is great similarity. The
greater part of the four years is filled with general courses in
English, modern languages, chemistry, biology, physics, sociology,
economics, and fine arts, while a minor part of the curriculum consists
of courses in cookery, clothing, and household administration. The
general courses are in essentials not different from courses in
colleges for men. Here and there instructors select materials and in
other ways relate the general courses to household arts, but after all
a girl who completes these courses has acquired the same educational
fundamentals that her brother gets in Columbia College or in any other
standard college for men. It is only, then, in the cookery, clothing,
and administration that there is sex-differentiated education, and even
in these the practice necessary to acquire proficiency in technique is
the chief peculiarity. So far as fundamental knowledge is concerned;
cookery is chiefly an application of chemistry, physics, and physiology
that could easily be made clear to one who had completed courses in
these sciences in a college for men; dress design is an application of
fine arts and its construction is a mechanical problem. The mental
problems involved in dress design and making cannot be far different
from house design and construction which are supposed to be primarily
adapted to men.
[Sidenote: Little differentiation.]
On the whole, then, there is really little possibility of
sex-differentiated education. This, I insist, is a fortunate fact of
vast importance in the mutual adjustment of the two sexes in marriage.
There could be no adjustment on an intelligent basis if education could
be utterly dissimilar. There can be perfect adjustment only when the
two individuals are adjusted harmoniously, and that means similar
outlooks on life's problems.
[Sidenote: Need of sex-education for feminism.]
Many of the problems of the modern feministic movement are such as to
demand rational education of both women and men with reference to sex
and marriage. Let me quote C. Gasquoine Hartley, whose suggestive
Chapters VIII and IX in her "Truth About Woman" (Dodd, Mead) deserve to
live long after the readable but unscientifically applied earlier
chapters are consigned to oblivion:
"To hear many women talk it would appear that the new ideal is a
one-sexed world. 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 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; his long-worn garments of authority and his mystery and
glamour have been torn into shreds--woman will have none of him.
"Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical
outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign
of our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies
we are sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage
in the face of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in
the scheme of Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly
in breaking the toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The
misogamist type of woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the
misogamist man. Not 'Free _from_ man' is the watch-cry of women's
emancipation that surely is to be, but 'Free _with_ man.'"
[Sidenote: Sex and intellectualism.]
And further on the same author, considering the problem of the women of
the common type that are classified as a "third sex," that of
temperamental neuter, says:
"Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into
the fierce competition of our disordered social state. Partly due
to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong
stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there has arisen
what I should like to call an over-emphasized Intellectualism.
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.
The significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because
for them the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their
valuable qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a
further progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple
truth from which we started; there are two sexes, the female and
the male, on their specific differences and resemblances blended
together in union every true advance in progress depends--on the
perfected woman and the perfected man."
[Sidenote: Young women misled by sexual pessimists.]
One who studies carefully the various aspects of the extreme feministic
movement must admit that there are many signs of the dangers which the
above quotations point out so clearly. Of course, we cannot believe in
the sincerity of all of the numerous women of thirty-five to fifty
years who pretend to ignore sex completely. Probably most of them have
discovered that they have misunderstood themselves; but it is also
probable that they have discovered too late for making a readjustment
in their own lives. However, it matters little whether such women have
really succeeded in ignoring sex. The real problem for educational
attack lies in the fact that such women often succeed in proselyting
young women under twenty-five, and these in turn may not come to see
the real truth about sex and life until ten or fifteen years later.
Clearly, organized education must protect young women against such
influences.
[Sidenote: The greatest good in sex-education.]
The greatest good which may come from the sex-education movement is not
prevention or elimination of social diseases, it is not improved
health, it is not general acceptance of the moral law of sex, it is not
one or all these that are devoutly to be hoped for; but far greater
than such possible results from sex-education, it will bring to many a
man and woman a deeper, nobler, and purer knowledge of what sex means
for the coming race and of what it means now to each individual who
realizes life's fullest possibilities in conjugal affection which
culminates in new life and new motives for more affection. Such an
understanding of sex in relation to home life will help this old world
more than anything else which sex-education may accomplish.
[Sidenote: The greatest sex problem.]
The problems of sex and marriage deserve far more attention than can be
given in this lecture. I am convinced that knowledge of sex in its
physical, psychical, social, and æsthetic aspects is the only sure
foundation for harmonious marriage under modern conditions. Therefore,
I believe this to be the greatest sex problem open to educational
attack.
§ 13. _The Eighth Problem for Sex-instruction: Eugenics_
[Sidenote: Meaning of eugenics.]
Eugenics, or the science of human good breeding, is just now the most
popular of the problems concerning human sex and reproduction. In
recent years, the biological investigators of heredity have published
some startling facts which show that the human race must soon check its
reckless propagation of the unfit and encourage reproduction by the
best types of men and women. This is not the place for a review of the
eugenic propositions. Those interested will find them in non-technical
form in many books (see the bibliographical chapter of this book, page
248).
[Sidenote: Eugenics in biology.]
Some of the chief facts of eugenics should be a part of every
well-organized scheme of sex-instruction, and taught through biology (§
17). Probably no other topic in biology is so likely to make an
ethical-social appeal, for the central point of eugenics is the
responsibility of the individual whose uncontrolled sexual actions may
transmit undesirable and heritable qualities and bring a train of
disaster to generations of descendants.
[Sidenote: Relation of eugenics and sex-hygiene.]
At this point we digress to correct the widespread error in confusing
sex-hygiene and eugenics. Many people who ought to know better use the
two terms synonymously, perhaps because they are afraid of that
comparatively novel but frank prefix in "sex-hygiene." The fact is that
eugenics and sex-hygiene have little in common. Eugenics is the
science of reproducing better humans by applying the established laws
of genetics or heredity. In brief, it means, on the positive side,
selecting desirable people as parents; and, negatively, preventing
propagation by the undesirables. This is the sum total of the task of
eugenics in the accurate sense of the term.
[Sidenote: Facts of heredity.]
So far as we know, each coming generation will inherit only qualities
that the parents inherited from their parents. It is a well-known
principle of biology that changes in the bodies of human beings during
their lifetime (dating from the fertilized egg that produces the
individual) are never in any noticeable degree inherited by
descendants. In short, acquired characteristics of the body tissues do
not influence the germ plasm, the living matter concerned with heredity
and reproduction, but the germ plasm that determines what the next
generation will inherit is fixed at birth. Thus tuberculosis,
alcoholism, gonorrhea, and syphilis may be acquired during the life of
an individual, but do not become fixed in the germ plasm. If the
infants show effects of any of these diseases, it is not because of
true heredity but because they were infected or influenced before
birth. Rarely does this happen to children of a tuberculous mother, but
often to those of a syphilitic mother. In a gonorrheal ophthalmia
neonatorum (specific inflammation of infants' eyes) it is a case of
infection _during_ birth.
[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene and eugenics parallel.]
Thus, it appears that sex-hygiene either personal or social (concerned
with venereal diseases) is not a part of eugenics. It is, however, a
phase of euthenics, which deals with the environmental factors that
affect the individual life. It is clear, then, that sex-hygiene (in the
strict medical sense) and eugenics are parallel and not conflicting.
Eugenics aims to select better parents who will transmit their own
qualities genetically. Sex-hygiene in its personal and social aspects
will make healthier parents able to give their offspring a healthier
start in life, especially because the offspring is free from the
prenatal effects of disease.
The teaching of heredity and eugenics is intended to develop a sense of
individual responsibility for the transmission of one's good or bad
inherited qualities to offspring. The teaching of sex-hygiene, either
personal or social, looks towards improving personal health and
preventing infection and injurious influence on the unborn next
generation. Obviously, we need both sex-hygiene and eugenics as part of
the larger sex-instruction.
§ 14. _Summary of Lectures on Sex Problems_
[Sidenote: Problems of health, attitude, and morals.]
We have made a general survey of the problems that offer reasons for
sex-instruction. We have noted that some of the problems are concerned
with health and, hence, lie within the scope of sex-hygiene in the
strict sense of that term; but some of them have only the remotest
relation to health and hygiene. On the contrary, they relate to the
ethical, social, and æsthetic attitude of individuals towards sex and
reproduction. Obviously, these touch problems not of sex health, but of
sex morality. In their educational importance I believe them as great,
perhaps even greater, than those of sex-hygiene. In fact, I have come
to believe that many individuals can best solve all their own sexual
problems on the basis of moral and æsthetic attitude.
[Sidenote: Many-sided instruction needed.]
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. In all these lines in which sex influences human life
profoundly, sex-education holds out the hope of help towards a better
life for all who receive and apply its lessons.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the _American Journal of Public Health_ for July, 1913, Dr.
John S. Fulton, Director General of the XV International Congress on
Hygiene and Demography, criticized severely the extremely radical
statistics that were presented on charts at the sex-hygiene exhibit of
the Congress, and were later published in Wilson's "Education of the
Young in Sex-hygiene."
[2] There is danger in quoting to young men the estimates as to
prevalence of social diseases and, therefore, of promiscuity. Fear of
consequences will not control one who is led to believe that he is
doing what most men do. (See Parkinson in _Educational Review_, Jan.
1911, pp. 44-46.)
[3] Many writers have discounted the value of warnings involved in
sex-instruction concerning social disease (see especially Cabot's
papers referred to in § 46, and Parkinson in _Educational Review_,
January, 1911).
[4] Louise Creighton, in her excellent little book on "The Social
Disease and How to Fight It" (Longmans), has well presented the
problems of social impurity from woman's point of view.
Dr. W.S. Hall, in "Life's Problems," has given in a few pages the
necessary protective knowledge.
[5] See "The Sexual Necessity," by Drs. Howell and Keyes.
[6] See also, Henderson's "Education with Reference to Sex."
[7] See chapter on "Motherhood and Marriage" in Foerster's "Marriage
and the Sex Problem."
[8] As an illustration of this fact, out of 558 Pittsburgh
professional prostitutes, 406 had never had children. Of the 152 who
were mothers, only 24 had two or more children.
[9] Many thinking men and women now agree with Ellen Key that
"marriage is immoral without mutual love," that "love is the sole
decisive point of view in questions concerning this relationship,"
that "it will come to pass that no finely sensitive woman will become
a mother except through mutual love," that "everything which is
exchanged between husband and wife in their life together can only be
the free gift of love, can never be demanded by one or the other as a
right." (Key--"The Morality of Woman.")
[10] 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.
[11] Misunderstood, it seems to me, because her philosophy demanding
that marriage begin with, exist with, and end with love means freedom
in love, and this has been misinterpreted as "free love" in the sense
of promiscuity. I know of no writer who stands for marriage on a
higher plane than that advocated by Ellen Key. Her lecture on
"Morality of Woman" (Seymour Co., Chicago) is a good condensed
statement of her largest ideas and a helpful introduction to "Love and
Marriage."
III
ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL ATTACK ON THE SEX PROBLEMS
§ 15. _The Task of Sex-education_
[Sidenote: Pragmatic solution of sex problems.]
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.[12]
[Sidenote: No hope for complete solution.]
[Sidenote: Constant advance towards ideals.]
Of course, only the ultra-Utopian dreamer claims that sex-education can
solve all the sexual problems of civilized life, but even the most
pessimistic disbeliever in the new movement admits that knowledge of
sexual life will be helpful to the great majority of people. Hence, it
is worth while to organize the educational attack on the sex problems
which we have considered in the preceding lectures. It seems to me that
we may gain an advantage by frankly admitting that the educational
attack is not expected to solve all sex problems for all people, for by
such admission we put to flight those shallow cynics who have opposed
the sex-education movement because they think (and probably correctly)
that immorality and social diseases and all other sexual disharmonies
will continue to exist as long as the human species does. Likewise,
there will be dishonesty and murder and preventable diseases and all
other human troubles in spite of education; but the advancement of
learning has slowly and progressively reduced the sum total of all the
disharmonies of life until now civilized people are largely free from
many of the original or barbaric conditions. Along similar lines we may
confidently think of sex-education as making a constantly advancing and
victorious attack on the problems of life that have grown out of our
primitive sexual instincts. Sex-education, like all other education,
strives towards ideals that individuals and society may always approach
but may never reach. It is only another case of Emerson's advice,
"hitch your wagon to a star," which means the adoption of high ideals
that lead ever on and on towards better life.
With this understanding that _the task of sex-education is the
ever-advancing improvement of sexual conditions in individual as well
as in social life_, let us turn now to consider the possible lines for
definite educational attack on the chief problems of sex. It will be
most helpful if we first analyze the general task of sex-education into
some specific aims that may definitely guide instruction, and then in
later lectures consider the methods and detailed subject matter of
sex-instruction.
§ 16. _The Aims of Sex-education_
[Sidenote: Emphasis on social disease.]
Since the revelations concerning the disastrous physical effects of
sexual immorality, especially as it exists in the commercialized
conditions of the social evil, have had the chief influence in
awakening intelligent people from their age-long ignorance and
indifference concerning the great sex problems, it was natural that
those who first proposed special instruction should have emphasized the
social evil and its diseases so much as to create the widespread but
erroneous impression that the great aim of sex-education is to teach
the distressing facts concerning the pathological consequences of
immorality.
[Sidenote: Other problems need emphasis.]
Now, without in the least underestimating the vast importance of the
emphasis placed on sexual immorality and social diseases in the
splendid pioneer work of the late Dr. Morrow and others for the
sex-education movement, and without suggesting that these topics should
be neglected while reorganizing the educational attack on sex problems,
I believe that so far as formal instruction in homes, schools, and
colleges is concerned, we may gain a decided advantage if we now
recognize and declare boldly that the physical effects of the diseases
arising from the social evil constitute _only one of several_ groups of
sex problems that organized education should attempt to solve.
Concerning the other problems that sex-education should touch with
great definiteness, it is my personal view that most of those outlined
in the preceding lectures will be affected by instruction along five
important lines, as follows:
[Sidenote: Five lines of instruction.]
(1) The scientific truths that lead to serious and respectful attitude
on all sex questions. (2) The personal sex-hygiene that independent of
social diseases conserves individual health directly or indirectly
through sexual normality. (3) The ethical responsibility of individuals
for the physical or social or psychical harm of their sexual actions
upon other individuals, _e.g._, in prostitution and illegitimacy. (4)
The hygienic, ethical, and psychical laws that promote physical and
mental health in monogamic marriage. (5) The established principles of
heredity and eugenics which foretell the possible coming of a better
race of humans. I believe that in these five lines there are
educational problems of present and future greater significance to
human health and happiness than are found in the social evil and its
diseases, commandingly important though these be. Therefore, in viewing
the field of sex-education with reference to the possible usefulness of
knowledge in helping individuals solve the vital problems that have
grown naturally out of the reproductive function, I believe that we are
logical only when we organize our educational aims so as to give
scientific instruction concerning the problems of sex in the several
lines in addition to the physical or hygienic aspects of the social
evil and its diseases.
[Sidenote: Four aims.]
As I now see in the large the sexual problems which scientifically
organized education should attack, the educational aims may be grouped
under four general headings as follows:
First and most important, sex-education should aim to develop an
open-minded, serious, scientific, and respectful attitude towards all
problems of human life which relate to sex and reproduction.
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.
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.
[Sidenote: Order of importance of aims.]
For emphasis, let me briefly summarize these aims of sex-education: (1)
Serious, scientific, and respectful attitude of mind on sex questions;
(2) personal sex-hygiene; (3) social and ethical and eugenic
responsibility for sex actions; (4) relation of immorality and social
diseases. I have deliberately, placed these educational aims in this
order because it is the order of greatest permanent importance in the
sex-education movement; it represents the greatest value to the largest
number of individuals who may learn the scientific truth; and it is the
order most natural, most logical, and most effective in pedagogical
practice with young people.
[Sidenote: Relation of aims to problems of sex.]
Sex-education organized with regard to these four aims will touch
definitely all the eight problems of sex that have been discussed in
preceding lectures. The first aim will directly affect the problem of
vulgarity and indirectly touch those stated under the third aim. The
second aim is obviously directed to the problem of personal health as
it may be influenced by the sexual processes of one individual
independent of others. Of course, there is also the personal aspect of
social diseases, but it is clearer to consider both personal and social
aspects of these diseases as a unit in the fourth aim. The third aim is
based on five of the eight great problems which involve individual
responsibility for the social evil, for illegitimacy, for sexual
immorality, for matrimonial harmony, and for eugenics. The social
aspects of the venereal diseases obviously involve personal
responsibility of the individual in relation to society as well as a
personal hygienic problem. Thus, six of the eight great sex problems
are essentially social and only those relating to personal hygiene and
individual attitude are so distinctly personal as to have only an
indirect relation to other individuals, as might be true in case of
unharmonious marriage of individuals who are vulgar minded or who have
been injured by unhygienic personal habits. Finally, the fourth aim
provides for teaching the _essential_ facts that may help individuals
protect themselves directly, and society indirectly, against the
diseases that awakened the world to the need of sex-education.
Let us turn now to analyze the aims of sex-education and consider how
they may be connected with a definite scheme for sex-instruction.
§ 17. _The Aims as the Basis of Organized Sex-instruction_
I have placed first the aim to develop a serious and respectful
attitude toward sex and reproduction because at the root of the sexual
problems of our times is the prevailing vulgar interpretation of sex
and life discussed in a preceding lecture (§ 11).
[Sidenote: Biology and attitude.]
Recognizing the great importance of attitude, how may it be influenced
by instruction in home or school? The most widely accepted answer is
that the best beginning may be made through study of biology (including
botany, zoölogy, and physiology) and through nature-study and hygiene
taught on a biologic basis. No other method of introduction to
sex-instruction is so natural and so likely to lead to a serious,
scientific, and open-minded attitude concerning sex. In fact, a large
part of the study of reproduction of plants and animals in courses of
biology in schools and colleges has its value chiefly in the
overwhelming evidence that problems of sex and reproduction are natural
and dignified aspects of life. Such biological study determines
attitude in no small degree. This is the chief justification for study
of the reproductive processes in a series of animals and plants
representing stages between the complex development of the highest
animals which parallel human life and the lowest forms which the
microscope reveals. In all my classes of twenty years in high school
and college I have noted a marked development of serious, scientific,
and open-minded attitude in response to natural and frank presentation
of animal and plant life-histories. Moreover, I have many times
requested large groups of students to write freely and frankly
concerning the influence of biological courses upon their own attitude;
and their papers have strongly supported my observation that study of
animal and plant life-histories exerts a profound influence upon the
attitude of students towards the human problems of sex and
reproduction. If I were stating a defense for biology as one of three
or four essential science courses for general education, I should place
the greatest emphasis upon the study of animals and plants as a
foundation for sex-instruction. Certain critics would reply that all
the biological facts that are actually used in the direct human
application of sex-instruction could be taught in a few lectures
without a year's course in biology; but it is a demonstrated fact that
a few isolated lessons do not give the attitude that comes from a good
course of biology taught with the view to culminating in special
sex-instruction.
[Sidenote: Literature and attitude.]
Only recently has it been pointed out that one's attitude towards sex
may be profoundly influenced by reading certain general literature that
holds up high ideals of love and sex and life. It will be most
convenient to consider the influence of literature on sex-instruction
in another lecture (§ 23).
[Sidenote: Teaching personal sex-hygiene.]
Now let us consider the general bearings of the personal sex-hygiene
demanded by the second aim. For children under ten and twelve the
necessary hygiene should be presented personally (see § 25). For young
people of adolescent years there are four possible ways of instruction
in personal sex-hygiene: (1) It may be added naturally to a course or
series of lessons in general hygiene including the problems of health
for all systems of organs. (2) It may be included in a study of
vertebrate and human reproduction in a course of biology or zoölogy.
(3) It may be presented by a special lecture that is independent of all
regular courses of study. (4) Special booklets may be put into the
hands of young people. Let us now examine each of these ways:
[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene in general hygiene.]
(1) Sex-hygiene as a natural part of a series of lessons in general
hygiene is most satisfactory when preceded by biological nature-study
or high-school biology in which life-histories of organisms have been
studied for the sake of attitude. At present we lack satisfactory
textbooks for this kind of correlation. There is a strong reaction
against independent courses of hygiene in high schools, and the next
plan is becoming more common.
[Sidenote: Hygiene in biology.]
(2) The inclusion of the necessary hygiene of all organs in courses of
biology or zoölogy that have emphasized physiology and its bearings on
health is the best arrangement so far proposed and tested in practice.
It has been tried with success by Dr. W.H. Eddy in the High School of
Commerce, New York City, and by other high-school teachers working
along the same lines. The arguments for teaching general hygiene on a
biological basis have been presented in the last chapter of "The
Teaching of Biology in Secondary Schools" by Lloyd and Bigelow, and put
in textbook form in the "Applied Biology" and "Introduction to Biology"
by M.A. and Anna N. Bigelow. However, personal sex-hygiene is not
included in these textbooks, because educational and public opinion do
not yet stand for such radical lessons in books for schools.
[Sidenote: Special lectures on hygiene.]
(3) Special lectures on sex-hygiene independent of biology or general
hygiene are at best makeshifts, and not without dangers. I fear the
effect of the abrupt introduction to sex problems by special lectures,
especially for girls who may be shocked much more than the average boys
can be. I heartily sympathize with parents and school officials who
object to special lectures that suddenly focus attention on problems of
sexual health. It seems to me that special lectures should be given
only when no other method of teaching is possible. This applies
especially to young people who are not in schools. While I have
stressed biological nature-study as offering the ideal basis for the
broadest kind of sex-education, I realize that there are cases where
such study cannot be held prerequisite to some aspects of sex-hygiene
that young people should know. However, we should aim to make such
cases the exceptions and not the rule. Some good may be accomplished by
teaching certain facts of sex-hygiene frankly and directly to those who
have absolutely no knowledge of nature-study and biology; but after
watching the reactions of groups of boys who were receiving such
information, I have been convinced that even with a limit of one hour
for instruction a biological setting is decidedly important in that it
gives an indirect approach.
(4) Special books and pamphlets are useful when, and only when, the
above methods are impossible, but certain cautions are desirable (see §
22).
[Sidenote: Difficulty in ethical-social teaching.]
The third aim involves some difficult educational problems. 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. The fact is that a good beginning has
been made, especially in teaching concerning social diseases, heredity,
and eugenics.
[Sidenote: Social hygiene and ethics.]
The value of all the proposed teaching concerning the relation of
immorality and social diseases is more ethical than hygienic. Read any
of the standard literature on the social side of venereal diseases,
especially the masterly writings of the eminent physician and chief
organizer of the American movement for sex-education, the late Dr.
Prince A. Morrow, of New York City; and one notes that the medical
facts have bearings in two directions. First, they indicate the
desirability of morality as a protection of personal health; and
second, they teach that the pathological results of the individual's
immoral living may be passed on later to innocent wives and children.
The first is as clearly personal hygiene as teaching that impure water
may cause typhoid; but the second is social hygiene and ethics. The
second is more impressive to all but the most selfish people.
There is good reason for believing that information concerning the
social diseases is more likely to impress the average young man through
the social-ethical appeal much more than as a matter of personal
health. Therefore, a biological lesson on social diseases, which may be
presented most logically in connection with other germ diseases, may
have its chief value in that its meaning is social and ethical.
[Sidenote: Biology and ethics.]
As another illustration of biology touching ethics, I have recently
come to believe that the teaching concerning heredity and eugenics,
which should be a standard part of the best sex-instruction, has its
greatest value in the ethical appeal, and not in the direct biological
application of the laws of heredity which underlie eugenics. I realize
that this statement is likely to be disputed by those biologists who
see in eugenics only the possibility of controlling heredity so as to
propagate better strains of humans, just as breeders of plants and
animals have produced better domesticated varieties. A biologist
naturally believes that the ultimate aim of eugenics is improvement
of physical and psychical qualities; but considering the
ethical-social-biological complications of human sex-problems, it seems
improbable that any decided and extensive improvement is likely to
come if we continue to limit our interpretation of the principles of
eugenics to the purely biological standpoint of the breeder of plants
and animals. Let me illustrate by some concrete facts from eugenics:
There is a widespread opinion among science teachers that high-school
biology should present some of the best established facts of heredity;
and that these should be eugenically applied to human life by means of
such illustrations as those afforded by the histories of certain
degenerate families, such as the well-known Jukes and Kallikaks. A
brief sketch of the history of the latter family, as described in Dr.
Goddard's interesting book, "The Kallikak Family" (Macmillan), will
make clear my point as to the ethical appeal of eugenics.
[Sidenote: Eugenics and ethical teaching.]
A young man of good ancestry broke the moral law about one hundred and
forty years ago and became the father of an illegitimate son by a
feeble-minded mother. Of 480 descendants of this son, there have been
46 normal, many immoral, many alcoholic and 143 feeble-minded. The same
man who back in the revolutionary days made a moral mistake which led
to such awful consequences, later married a woman of good family and
became the progenitor of a second line of 496 descendants of whom 494
have been normal mentally, while two were affected by alliance with
another family; and all have been first-class citizens, many of them
prominent in business, professions, etc.
Even making due allowance for the depressing influence of the
environment in which most of the down-and-out descendants in the
degenerate line lived, the comparison between the normal and the
abnormal lines from the same ancestor gives the most convincing eugenic
evidence that has been discovered in the human race. Doubtless it will
long be used as a basis for attempted biological control of the
propagation of the unfit. Many similar cases of hereditary degeneracy
are recorded in books on eugenics.
Such a eugenic record as that of this Kallikak family should be
reviewed in every high school and college in connection with the topic
"heredity" in a course of biology, for it will teach two important
lessons: (1) The biological principle that defects, both physical and
mental, are highly heritable, even for many generations; and (2) the
ethical responsibility for the sex actions of the individual who may
start a long train of human disaster that may visit the children unto
even later than the third and fourth generations. The first lesson is a
purely biological one which suggests the eugenic argument that
defective humans, like undesirable animals and plants, should not take
part in the perpetuation of the species. The second lesson is not
biological but ethical, suggesting individual responsibility for
conduct which may disastrously affect other individuals' lives. It
seems to me that so far as general education is concerned, the ethical
lesson is the more impressive and more likely to lead to voluntary
eugenic practice by individuals. It is my observation that even many
intelligent people are not seriously impressed by the biological
evidences for eugenics considered as a general problem, but their
reaction is one of interest when one begins to present the question of
ethical responsibility for the transmission of physical and mental
defects to future generations. Such considerations have led me to the
view, already suggested, that eugenic studies in courses of biology
have their greatest practical value in their ethical implications,
which, of course, by influencing individual responsibility for
reproduction may lead to the desirable biological improvement of the
human race. Teachers of biology should present, as an economic problem,
the facts which will make better breeds of plants and animals by direct
application of the biological laws of heredity; but they should present
and apply parallel facts to human life in order to influence first of
all individual responsibility for ethical control of reproductive
activity, and thus indirectly work eugenically for an improved human
race.
[Sidenote: Aim of eugenics.]
Thus the aim of eugenics is most likely to be attained through ethical
rather than biological application of the teaching which our schools
can give. The men and women who view life selfishly with no feelings of
ethical responsibility towards others of the present or future will
take no practical interest in the biological problems of human
eugenics, although the economic problems of plant and animal breeding
may interest some of these same people.
[Sidenote: Education and other aspects of sex problems.]
In addition to the ethical-social bearings of biological teaching, our
sex-education will be incomplete until we learn how to attack the sex
problems directly and effectively with reference to the ethical,
social, psychical, and æsthetic aspects. Perhaps we may be able to do
this only with mature people; probably it is too much to hope that even
a serious impression will be made on all intelligent people; but
somehow sex-education must be completed by adequate presentation of
these aspects, for the problems of sex are satisfactorily solved only
in the lives of those fortunate individuals whose vision of the
relation of sex and life combines the viewpoints of biology, hygiene,
psychology, ethics, religion, and last--but far from least--æsthetics.
[Sidenote: Only essential knowledge of social diseases.]
Finally, the educational application of the fourth aim demands some
explanation. Sometime in the adolescent period all young people should
learn the essential facts regarding the two social diseases and their
relation to immoral living. There is the widespread impression that
those advocating sex-education believe in giving great prominence to
the social diseases; but in opposition to this I cite the report of a
committee of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, published in the
_Journal of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis_, January,
1913, and later reprinted as a pamphlet by the American Social Hygiene
Association. In that report there are _twenty-three_ recommendations
concerning sex-instruction; but _only_ one mentions social diseases
and in these words: "During the later period of adolescence ... there
should be given ... special instruction as to the character and dangers
of the venereal diseases." That seems sufficient. It is not desirable
that young people should review the horrible facts relating to
perverted sexuality. Ten or twenty brief and authoritative statements
quoted impressively from medical and social literature ought to give
fair warning of lurking dangers in immoral living. More extensive
information has often proved dangerous. I would gladly advocate that
this dark side of life be kept in sealed books if I did not know that
so many young people need forewarning and definite guidance. Our
educational system will not do its full duty if it fails to offer the
needed help so that it may be obtained by all adolescent young people
who are not so fortunate as to be guided by parents and other personal
teachers.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] To avoid misunderstanding, let me repeat from the first lecture
that I am constantly thinking of sex-education in the larger sense;
and instruction in schools can be, at best, only a part.
IV
THE TEACHER OF SEX-KNOWLEDGE
§ 18. _Who Should Give Sex-instruction?_
A large number of people have been convinced that young people need
knowledge which will help them face the great problems of sex; but they
withhold their approval of the sex-education movement because they are
not satisfied that proper teachers exist. It is, therefore, evident
that we cannot make permanent progress by emphasizing the need of
sex-education unless we can give assurance that qualified teachers are
available.
[Sidenote: The teacher most important.]
The situation as regards teachers of sex-instruction is very different
from that of all other subjects concerning which young people should be
taught. We cannot safely plan the teaching regarding sex until we know
the teacher. This will be evident, I think, after some general
considerations concerning selection of teachers and some discussion of
problems such as the first teacher, teachers for classes, and some
undesirable teachers. The general rule should be, first, find the safe
and sure teacher and, second, select the facts and plan the lessons
that the chosen teacher may give effectively.
[Sidenote: Teachers of same sex for children.]
So far as young children are concerned, the needed instruction is so
general in character that the sex of the competent teacher is of little
importance, but the information that ought to prepare for and guide
through the mazes of adolescent youth should come to young people from
teachers of the same sex. If exceptions must be made rather than omit
instruction altogether, some very mature women may safely guide both
boys and girls through adolescence; but men, even physicians, should
not undertake instruction of adolescent young women, unless parents and
other mature people are present to help with attitude. That women may
well instruct boys I know, because the most impressive sex lecture I
ever heard was given by the late Dr. Mary Wood-Allen to the boys of the
freshman class when I was a college student. But note that I have said
"some very mature women." The fact is that I fear danger for some boys
if they are frankly instructed by attractive young women who are only
ten to fifteen years older than their pupils. Hence, I urge great
caution if there must be any exceptions to the general rule that
teachers and pupils should be of the same sex.
[Sidenote: Coeducational classes.]
I realize the difficulty of applying this rule in many high schools
where the foundations of sex-education are well laid on the biological
basis. There is no reason why the biological studies should not be
coeducational through nature-study and biology as far as the
development of frogs and birds and, in a general way, of mammals. In
fact, both of my textbooks, the "Applied Biology" and the "Introduction
to Biology," which emphasize reproduction of organisms more than other
high-school books, have been used throughout in coeducational classes.
However, these books stop where the problems of human life begin and
should be supplemented by lessons for sex-limited classes. There are
writers who suggest that segregation of the sexes for teaching
concerning human life may be at present a necessity because complete
frankness on sexual questions is certainly obstructed by tradition; but
we must not ignore the deep social reasons why, in general, there must
be maintained a certain amount of reserve between the sexes in the
consideration of some important problems of life. No educational theory
or practice can possibly alter the fundamental physical or psychical
relations of the sexes which nature seems to have fixed immutably.
[Sidenote: Married women as teachers.]
One other point that deserves attention in this connection is the
common statement that only married women, preferably mothers, can be
competent instructors of young women. This strikes me as more than
absurd. Personal experience is not always necessary for teaching in any
line. The greatest medical teachers have not had the diseases they
describe so clearly. The best elementary teachers and specialists on
the care of children are not always mothers; on the contrary, some of
these are men. The fact is that these teachers have learned, not from
personal experience, but from the great accumulations of scientific
knowledge of medicine, hygiene, and education. There is an abundance of
such knowledge relating to sex that may be clearly understood by bright
women who have no bi-personal knowledge of sex. Therefore, I believe
that it is nonsense to insist that only women with complete sexual
experiences can be efficient guides for other women.
§ 19. _The Child's First Teachers of Sex-knowledge_
[Sidenote: Mothers and other first teachers.]
The first instruction which may begin to lay the foundation for the
individual's sex-education should be given in early childhood by
parents, or by other adults, who happen to be on the most intimate
personal terms with the child. Usually this means the mother; but there
are numerous cases of teachers, governesses, grandmothers, and even
fathers who have greater personal influence with certain children than
their mothers have. The essential point is that the child should be
instructed only by an adult who can exert the greatest personal
influence.
[Sidenote: Mothers and adolescent boys.]
Many parents who believe in sex-education for their children hold that
the mothers should give all necessary hygienic guidance and teach the
elementary facts of life to the children of both sexes in the
pre-adolescent years, but that with the dawn of adolescence the girls
should continue to be instructed by their mothers, while the boys
should be guided by their fathers. So far as girls are concerned, this
seems to be a fairly good plan; but nine times out of ten it is not
best for the boys for several reasons: First, the sudden change of
attitude on the part of the mother will surely impress upon the boy
that there is something about sex in boys that even his mother dares
not talk over with him. At about this same time when the mother begins
to avoid the sex question with her boy, he will surely begin to get
vulgar information and impressions from his boy companions. He will in
all probability begin to hear the impure and obscene stories and vulgar
language that are so common among many men and boys, and he will be
sure to learn that the vulgarity which he hears must not be repeated in
the presence of his mother and sisters. It is a most critical time in
the mental attitude of the boy. His mother has so far been directing
him towards purity and then suddenly sets him adrift. 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. Lucky is that
adolescent boy whose mother realizes her duty and her opportunity and
holds him as intimately as if he were a girl of corresponding age.
§ 20. _Selecting Teachers for Class Instruction_
The references to "the teacher" in the following are primarily
applicable to those who may be called upon to give sex-instruction as
class work in schools, colleges, churches, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A.,
and other educational organizations.
The chief question for discussion in this lecture is that of selecting
the teacher of those phases of sex-instruction that are directly
related to human life, that is, personal sex-hygiene and sex-ethics. So
far as biological facts of sex are concerned, there are no special
problems such as may not be handled by teachers of biology in general
according to the accepted methods (see Lloyd and Bigelow, "Teaching of
Biology in the Secondary School" and Bigelow, "Teacher's Manual of
Biology").
[Sidenote: Regular teachers if possible.]
As already suggested, a large part of the sex-instruction is simply an
extension of biological science, hygiene, and ethics; and in secondary
schools and colleges should be given by selected teachers of the
regular staff and whenever possible as a part of regular courses. There
may be some necessary modifications to this plan; for example, in
Teachers College the course on sex-education and another series of
lectures on sex-physiology and hygiene for women are open to students
who do not take the biology courses in which the sex-instruction
logically belongs.
[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene and ethics.]
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. While nature-study and
biology and general hygiene may be organized so as to present the major
portion of the facts which should be included in a complete scheme of
sex-instruction in schools and colleges, the application of these facts
to personal life is the most difficult problem of sex-education. In
fact, it is the only real problem, for long before sex-education became
a definite movement the most efficient science teachers were presenting
the fundamental facts on which we now propose to build with certain
hygienic and ethic instruction which directly touches the personal life
of the student. As already said, the human application will require
only a few lessons, preferably in connection with nature-study,
biology, ethics, or hygiene. But although brief, such instruction is
the keystone in the arch of sex-education, and it is very important
that there be no serious mistakes in selecting the teachers.
[Sidenote: Sex specialists not desirable.]
I have mentioned special teachers as necessary for instruction with
direct reference to specialists human life. I hasten to add that I
still agree with the report of the special committee (Morrow, _et al._)
of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene that it is not desirable
that any teacher should make a specialty of this type of instruction
and of no other. We do not want "sex specialists" in the schools (see
pp. 10 and 20-23 of the Report of the Committee). It is important that
all teachers should have general information regarding the sex problems
of young people in order to be able to help individual pupils.
§ 21. _Certain Undesirable Teachers for Special Hygienic and Ethical
Instruction_
It will be most helpful if we consider the problem of selecting
teachers with a view to rejecting those who certainly should not
undertake the special hygienic and ethical teaching, for teachers who
are good in other subjects and who are fortunately free from certain
disqualifications discussed in the following, may by means of study
adapt themselves for the final and most important stages of
sex-education.
There are five types of teachers who should be regarded as disqualified
for teaching personal sex-hygiene and sex-ethics.
[Sidenote: Embarrassed teachers.]
First, those men and women who are unable to speak of sex-hygiene as
calmly and seriously as they do of any other phase of hygiene had
better not undertake the instruction of young people. There are many
such men and women among teachers who, so far as scientific training is
concerned, ought to be good teachers of sex-hygiene. As an illustration
of this attitude that leaves the wrong impression with students, it is
reported that a good teacher of hygiene recently prefaced a brief talk
to college girls as follows: "I shall now consider a process that no
cultured woman ever mentions except with bated breath. I refer to
menstruation."
[Sidenote: Abnormal teachers.]
The second kind of people who should not teach sex-hygiene are the men
and women who are the unfortunate victims of sexual abnormality, either
physical or psychical, that more or less influences their outlook on
life. Certain neurotic and hysterical men or women who lack thorough
physiological training and whose own sexual disturbances have led them
to devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological
literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and
Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this
true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led
them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result
of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression--a
diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ten cases. Such a woman
is a very dangerous teacher of sex-hygiene for adolescent girls; and a
positive menace to older unmarried women who, if free from absorbing
work, may spend their leisure in becoming more or less restless under
the unsocial, if not unphysiologic, conditions of unwelcome celibacy.
This is no imaginary danger. The reader of this will not be interested
in details, but the author has received from physicians and others
reliable information concerning several extremely abnormal women of the
above-described type who are taking an active interest in the
sex-instruction of young people and are actually suggesting to their
friends among young women the dangerous and untrue doctrine that
prolonged celibacy for women results in repressed sexuality that surely
leads to ill health. Such ideas, it is true, are traceable to certain
well-known radical writers on the psychopathology of sex; but we must
remember that the great majority of physicians and other scientific
investigators who have studied such problems refuse to believe that
repressed sex instincts in either men or women do the harm that a few
extremists have claimed. But even if it were known beyond the shadow of
a doubt that repressed sex instincts may injure people, it would be
unwise to intrust young people to instruction by teachers who have a
hypochondriacal interest in such a doctrine of repression. Such
suggestions can do only harm to the vast majority of persons who
receive them. To say the least, it is unfortunate that the
psychopathology of sex has become so widely circulated among those who
are not well trained in physiology and psychiatry.
[Sidenote: Teachers who emphasize sexual abnormality.]
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 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. Here is a grave
danger. 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.
[Sidenote: Pessimistic teachers.]
The fourth kind of people who ought not to instruct the young in
personal problems of sex-hygiene are the men and women whose own
unhappy romances or married life, or whose knowledge of vice
conditions, have made them pessimistic concerning sex-problems. There
are in our schools and colleges to-day some such men and many such
women, and there will be danger for young people when the growing
freedom of expression allows these sexual pessimists to impress their
own hopeless philosophy of sex upon students. The educational world
does not need such teachers, but rather those who can follow the late
Dr. Morrow in seeing a bright side of life that almost dispels the
darkness of sexual errors.
[Sidenote: Teachers not respected by pupils.]
The fifth kind of persons who ought not to teach the personal side of
sex-hygiene are those who cannot command the most serious respect of
their pupils. This applies especially to many men teachers whose
flippant attitude and even questionable living are not likely to help
their pupils, especially boys, towards a satisfactory interpretation of
sex problems. Of course, such teachers ought not be in schools at all,
but the fact is that for various reasons they sometimes get there and
stay there; and so they must be weighed by the school official who
selects the teachers to be intrusted with special problems of
sex-education.
[Sidenote: No instruction without satisfactory teachers.]
Summarizing, I have in this lecture aimed to warn the school
administrator, and others who must select teachers of classes, against
the kinds of teachers who ought not be chosen for presenting the
special problems of sex-education, especially those of sex-hygiene and
sex-ethics. I have pointed out that there are five serious
disqualifications; and it is probable that if strictly applied when
choosing teachers for special sex-instruction, there will be
elimination of three or four in every ten of those whose training in
science might be expected to qualify them as teachers of this special
line. It is a fair question as to what a school or other institution
should do if it has no teachers who are free from the above
disqualifications. My own belief is that it is better to get an
outsider for the handling of the special problems. If this is
impracticable, then suggest to the students that they read certain
books such as are recommended in the last sections of this book. Even
entire omission of the study of the personal and social aspects of
sex-hygiene and sex-ethics is far wiser than intrusting a class to a
teacher with one or more of the negative qualifications that we have
been considering in this lecture. The effect of sex-education upon
individual lives will in no small degree depend upon the impression
made by the living teacher who deals with the difficult problems of sex
in relation to hygiene and ethics. Hence, the greatest care should be
taken when selecting the teacher for this all-important part of the
student's sex-education.
V
BOOKS AS TEACHERS CONCERNING SEX AND LIFE
§ 22. _Value and Danger of Special Sex Books for Young People_
[Sidenote: Books for private reading.]
There are many parents and teachers who believe that young people
should get their sexual information by private reading, and numerous
books for boys and girls have been prepared to meet such a demand. The
desire for such "private" reading undoubtedly exists, especially in
boys; but this is part of the general air of secrecy and vulgarity that
has enshrouded the truth about sexual matters. Many eminent physicians
agree that there are elements of physical and perhaps moral danger when
a boy reads a sex-science book secretly, but that there are few such
possibilities in frank and scientific teaching by a competent
instructor. This is recognized by leaders in the Y.M.C.A., and they
prefer to read books with the boys in study classes. Many scientific
women think there is no such danger for average girls, but agree that
girls as well as boys will gain in respect for the subject of sex if
the atmosphere of secrecy can be avoided. Hence, while books for
private reading are better than ignorance, they alone will not solve
many of the problems at which sex-education is directed. We must cease
to foster the secrecy created by an atmosphere of obscenity, and the
study of sex must be brought into the light of day. Let good books be
recommended through parents and with their approval be issued freely by
libraries and without restrictions which suggest something dark and
wrong. Let parents and teachers encourage such reading, but not as
something requiring secrecy. Rather let such books be read as freely as
any other good books, and let parents and competent teachers follow the
young readers closely so as to explain facts and help develop the
desirable attitude of mind. Especially let parents encourage the idea
that approved sex-science books may be read at the family fireside as
properly as any other books. Above all, let parents and teachers work
in every possible way against the time-worn idea that problems of sex
are essentially vulgar and demand secrecy even in scientific study. We
must have a nobler and healthier outlook on human life than that which
so commonly prevails, and we can never get it by secret study of
sex-science by young people. Such study may do some good by warning
against unhygienic habits and social diseases; but it is certainly
inadequate to give the open-minded attitude needed so much for
appreciating the ethical, social, and æsthetic bearings of human life
as it is influenced by normal sexual functions.
[Sidenote: Pamphlets _vs._ books.]
It has been urged by well-known teachers that, for sex-instruction,
pamphlets are better than books in that they do not hold the attention
too long on topics that may be exciting to some young people. On the
other hand, books usually make a stronger appeal, while pamphlets are
likely to be regarded lightly, as are magazines and newspapers. There
is no doubt that most sex books for young people are too extended, and
there is need of condensed forty-and fifty-cent booklets in place of
the books commonly sold at one dollar. Three or four small booklets by
different authors read at widely separated intervals will interest and
influence a young man more than one large and comprehensive book. There
is besides great value in the points of view of various authors.
[Sidenote: Better books needed.]
At present there are no thoroughly satisfactory books for adolescent
boys and girls. In my opinion, W.S. Hall's books for boys are the most
reliable, and his "Life Problems" is the best selection of facts for
girls; but some mature readers criticize the style of presentation.
Some other books for adolescent young people are mentioned with
critical notes in the bibliography at the end of this book. There is
still plenty of chance for authors to experiment in writing books of
this class.
§ 23. _General Literature and Sex Problems_
[Sidenote: Sex in literature.]
In the world's best literature there is much that teaches important
lessons in the field of the larger sex-education. In the guise of love,
sex problems have always held the prominent place in all literature.
Many a great book teaches direct or positive lessons by holding up high
ideals for inspiration and imitation; but some of the most impressive
lessons are in negative form, especially in fiction that deals with the
tragedies of life.
[Sidenote: Religious books.]
As examples of literature of direct influence in helping many young
people solve the problems of sex, we think first of that which holds up
high ideals of personal purity, such as the Bible and other religious
books. There is no doubt that such literature has a tremendous
influence on many young people; but it has little influence on others,
probably in part because the somewhat mystical style of most religious
writings is meaningless to many people.
[Sidenote: Appeal of poetry.]
It is a fact that many young people who refuse to be interested in
religious literature may be influenced for sexual purity by the
emotional appeal of some general literature. This is especially true of
romantic poetry. I believe that the high "idealism" of love inspired by
Tennyson's "The Princess" and "Idylls of the King," by Longfellow's
"Evangeline" and "The Hanging of the Crane," by some of Shakespeare's
plays, and by other great poetry with similar themes has had and will
continue to have greater influence on the attitude and ethics of many
young people than all the formal sex-teaching that can be organized.
Hence, I believe that teachers of literature should be led to take
interest in the larger sex-education to the end that by selection and
interpretation of great masterpieces they may contribute in a valuable
way to the solution of some of the problems that have their center in
the deeper nature of sex.
[Sidenote: Importance of interpretation.]
Interpretation of literature by teachers is very important for the
purposes of sex-education of young people. As an example, take
Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," whose movement centers in the life
problems that turn around love. The average reader is likely to miss
the great lessons if the poem is not critically interpreted either by
living teachers or by such critical essays as those by Henry van Dyke
in his "Poetry of Tennyson" and Newell Dwight Hillis in his "Great
Books as Life-Teachers." Without interpretation "The Idylls" may teach
false as well as true lessons of life. Some of the Knights of the Round
Table (Galahad and Percivale) were worthy followers of the good and
pure King Arthur, and some of them (like Lancelot and Tristram and
Merlin) proved unable to live up to the vow of chastity to which Arthur
swore all his knights. And on the part of the ladies of Arthur's court,
there was purity and devotion and true womanhood in Elaine and Enid,
while Guinevere and Ettarre and Vivien were unchaste and faithless. In
fact, all phases of the relations of men and women in the struggles and
perplexities of life are pictured; and therefore it is important that a
well-trained teacher should be the guide and interpreter if the "Idylls
of the King" are to be read with the idea of understanding their true
bearings on life, which includes their contribution to the larger
sex-education.
I have used "The Idylls of the King" as an illustration because they
are so many-sided in sex problems; but much other great literature may
be made to help young people to high ideals of relationships between
men and women. I have emphasized the place of such literature in the
larger sex-education because I have come to believe that interpretation
of life either real or in great literature may have profound influence
in the development of one's philosophy of life. As a matter of
educational procedure insuring that young people will learn to
interpret life, especially those aspects that the larger sex-education
touches so definitely, there appears to be no more natural and
unobtrusive way of approach than that offered by the study of
literature. I am convinced that many teachers of literature may be
efficient workers in the cause of the larger sex-education,
supplementing the scientific teaching in the ethical lines where
science is admittedly weak, if not helpless. It is to be hoped that
numerous teachers will soon grasp this opportunity. If they will study
the sex-education movement in order to get its general bearings and
will teach the sex aspect of literature on a basis of high ideals of
life and love, we need have no fear as to the culmination of the
instruction which properly begins with study of the biological facts of
life in its sexual aspects and leads on and on to its climax in the
ethical aspects of the individual's sex life in relation to other
individuals, that is, to society.
[Sidenote: Not to be labeled "sex-education."]
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-educati
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