Sex-education. Maurice A. Bigelow
in Laws of Sex," and pamphlets by Dr. Prince Morrow. See also pages 241–243.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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