The child hears and sees much that is erotic, even immoral, but does not stop to think about it, does not understand it. After a while its ignorance becomes a puzzle; soon lascivious thoughts arise. Maria Lischnewska describes very vividly this psychological process in the soul of the child, in part according to her observations as a teacher. She justly criticizes the “stork stories,” to which the child listens without believing them, in order subsequently to be enlightened in an extremely disagreeable manner by older ill-conditioned comrades.[699]
These children, ten or twelve years of age, often learn about sexual matters from the lowest side, without obtaining a true knowledge. They frequently acquire the most astounding verbal treasury of lewd expressions, and even sing obscene songs, of which Maria Lischnewska gives a remarkable example on the part of a girl twelve years of age.
No, there can be no question that the child at school, from the tenth year onwards, should, without fear of disastrous consequences, be enlightened regarding sexual matters by parents and teachers, in order to avoid the dangers which we have just described. But this instruction must be divested of any individual relationship, of any personal character, and must be communicated in thoroughly general terms, as natural scientific knowledge, as a medical doctrine, belonging to the province of philosophical and pathological science. In this way will be avoided any undesirable accessory effect related to subjective perceptions. When Matthisson esteems youth as happy on this account, because the book of possibilities is not yet open to its gaze, this certainly does not hold as regards sexual enlightenment. Here, to a certain degree, this book of possibilities must be disclosed, if we do not wish all the poetry and all the ideal view of life to be utterly destroyed by contact with rude reality. Precisely in this case do we understand the wonderful remark of Goethe, that we receive the veil of poetry from the hand of truth. This first renders possible a truly earnest and profound conception of sexual relationships; this creates a consciousness of responsibility which cannot be awakened sufficiently early. The true danger is, as Freud[700] also points out, the intermixture of “lasciviousness and prudery” with which humanity is accustomed to regard the sexual problem, just because people have not learned sufficiently to understand the connexion between cause and effect in this department of human activity.
Various methods have been recommended for sexual enlightenment. I shall discuss more particularly the suggestions of the Austrian Realschul professor, Sigmund, of the Volkschul teacher, Maria Lischnewska, and of the University professor, F. W. Förster.
Sigmund (quoted by Ullmann, op. cit., p. 7) considers that in the Volkschüler (primary schools), in the case of children up to the age of eleven years, there should be no systematic explanation of sexual matters, and that this should be begun first in the Gymnasium (higher school). His scheme of instruction is as follows:
1. The enlightenment of the pupils at the Gymnasium is to be effected in five stages (Classes I., II., V., VI., VII.)
2. The enlightenment in the lower classes is limited to the processes of sexual reproduction. In the first class, the origin and birth of the mammalian young and the origin of insects’ eggs are explained. In the second class, the origin and birth of reptiles’ and birds’ eggs, the fertilization of the eggs of fishes and batrachians, the ova of the sea-urchin, and those of the jellyfish, are described. The act of sexual intercourse will not be alluded to in the first two classes—that is, it will not be mentioned to children before the age of thirteen years.
3. The completion of the idea of “sexual life” is effected by means of botanical and zoological instruction in the upper school in a synthetic manner, wherein no important detail is omitted, but the copulatory act is kept in the background.
4. All sexual matters expressly concerning human beings, and all the pathological relations of the sexual life, should be left to the hygienic instruction, which is given during one hour weekly to the seventh class as a part of general instruction in somatology.
5. The natural history taught to the sixth class will embrace zoology only; the natural system will be considered in an ascending series (excluding human somatology, which in a logical manner is deferred until the study of zoology is completed, and it will thus be dealt with in the seventh class, as a preparation to the instruction in hygiene).