CHAPTER XXXIX IS CLASS INSTRUCTION IN SEX HYGIENE PRACTICABLE? Among remedies for preventable disease and preventable poverty, the following was urged at a national conference for the betterment of social conditions: "We have been too prudish. Because we have been unwilling to teach school children the evils of violating sex hygiene, we have been unsuccessful in combating evils justly attributable to ignorance on the part of girls as to the duties and dangers of motherhood." This point of view is shared by so many men and women that a national body was organized in 1905 to promote the teaching of sex hygiene,—the Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. This society has its headquarters in Chicago, and distributes at cost lectures and essays. The second of its educational pamphlets is addressed to teachers, and is entitled "Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex." The introduction asks eleven questions of the teachers as follows: I. Do you wish a pamphlet on sex subjects to hand to your pupils? Why? 2. Do you wish separate pamphlets for boys and girls? 3. For what age limits and social conditions do you wish them? 4. What topics do you wish the pamphlets for boys to "handle"? 5. What topic do you wish the pamphlet for girls to "handle"? 6. If you think one pamphlet sufficient for both sexes, what should it consider? 7. How far do you go in teaching sexual hygiene or reproduction? By what method? 8. What special difficulties do you find in teaching it? 9. What special need of teaching it have you found? 10. What special benefits (or otherwise) have you noticed from teaching it? II. What criticisms (favorable or otherwise) do you encounter? The difficulty of introducing formal instruction in sex hygiene, even in the upper grades of public and private schools, is hinted at in the pamphlet. The purpose of the publishing society as given in its constitution is "to eliminate the spread of diseases which have their origin in the social evil." Although sex hygiene does not begin with sex immorality, almost every text-book on sex hygiene, and almost every pamphlet urging class instruction in sex hygiene, begins with sex immorality. Yet only the exceptional school child is in danger of violating sex morals, while every school child needs instruction in sex hygiene. Instruction in sex hygiene, whether at school or at home, should deal with sex normality, sex health, sex temperance. Instruction in sex immorality is objectionable, not merely because it offends prudists, not because it is difficult, but because it can be shown by experience to be less efficacious than training in sex health. To expect fear to prompt sex hygiene is to make a mistake that has retarded the development of sound measures in the treatment of offenders against criminal law. For centuries man failed in attempts to fit the punishment to the crime. To deter men from committing crime by holding up a threat of prolonged and dreadful punishment has been found futile. Individuals take the risk because they think they will escape detection. It is an axiom of criminal procedure that a would-be offender is deterred by the certainty, not by the severity, of punishment. The modern theory of probation is, that children and adults may be best led away from evil practices by crowding out old influences with newer and stronger interests. Occupations that are wholesome are made to rival diversions or occupations that are harmful and criminal. Abnormal conditions of mind and body in regard to sex can almost always be traced to general physical ill health or to an unhealthy moral environment. Cure and prevention require two kinds of treatment within reach of parents and teachers: (1) build up the child's physical condition; OBJECT LESSONS FOR INSTRUCTION IN SEX HEALTH Note the uncomfortable, unhealthy overdressing and (2) give him other interests. Proper physical care, and work adjusted to body and mind, may be relied upon to do infinitely more to promote sex hygiene than instruction, either at home or at school, in immoral sex diseases. That sex morality is weak and untrustworthy which is based upon fear of sex diseases. Like alcoholism and nicotinism, the saddest results of sex diseases are social and economic. The strongest reasons against such diseases are economic and social, not physiological. Once having made up our minds to concentrate the teaching of sex hygiene upon sex health rather than upon sex immorality, upon sex functions rather than upon sex diseases, the chief objection to school instruction and to instruction in class will disappear. Our school text-books in history, literature, and biology abound in references to sex distinctions, sex functions, and sex health. In enumerating THE STUDY OF INFANT HEALTH IS CONDUCIVE TO PURE- Note the simple, comfortable, hygienic dress the daily routine of health habits I mentioned daily bathing of the armpits and crotch. There is nothing in this injunction to offend or injure a boy or girl. If studies and physical training are to be adapted to physiological age, and if children are to know why they are graded according to physiological age as well as mental brightness, we shall soon be talking of mature, maturing, and not-yet-maturing girls and boys, so that everybody will be instructed in sex hygiene without offense. Any teacher who can explain the family troubles of King Henry VIII without becoming selfconscious can easily learn to look a class of girls and boys in the face and explain how a mother's health will injure her baby before its birth, why breast-fed babies are more apt to live than bottle-fed babies, why it is as important for the mother to keep a nursing breast absolutely clean as to clean the nipple of a nursing bottle. Words whispered by chil-` dren, or marked in dictionaries, to be stealthily and repeatedly looked upon and talked over with other children, lose all their glamour when pronounced by a teacher. In these days of state subsidy of school libraries the child is hard to find who has not free access to books of fiction full of voluptuous allusions that make undesirable impressions which only blunt, candid discussion of sex facts can make harmless. Children now learn, whether in fashionable private schools or crowded slums, practically all that is lascivious and unwholesome about sex. For teachers to explain that which is wholesome and pure will disinfect the minds of most children and protect them against miseducation. Class instruction in hygiene is practicable for all matters pertaining to normal sex health. Girls of thirteen should be taught in classes the fact and meaning of menstruation, and its grave importance to the health, in order that they may care for themselves not only before, during, and immediately after the menstrual period, but throughout the month, in order that menstruation itself shall not be unnecessarily painful, enervating, and harmful to efficiency. It is not yet advisable to discuss dangers peculiar to girls or dangers peculiar to boys in mixed classes. Generally speaking, it is undesirable that men teachers discuss girls' troubles with girl pupils. But why should it not become possible for women teachers to explain health dangers peculiar to girls to classes of boys? |