Third Chapter.
Sexual Education.
[This chapter is designed for parents rather than for teachers, and is hence not paraphrased here. A few observations are, however, in place.] Great care is necessary at the period of youth that a rational system of food and exercise be maintained. But the general fault is in the omission of this care in preceding years. One cannot neglect due precautions for many years, and then hope to repair the damage caused, by extreme care for one or two years.
Special care is necessary that the brain be not overworked in early years, and a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system thereby induced. We desire to repress any tendency to the rapid development of the nervous system. Above all, is the reading of the child to be carefully watched and guarded. Nothing can be worse food for a child than what are called sensational romances. That the reading of such tends to enfeeble and enervate the whole thinking power is a fact which properly belongs to the intellectual side of our question not yet reached, and may be here merely mentioned. But the effect on the physical condition of the youth, of such carelessly written sensational stories, mostly of the French type, and full of sensuous, if not sensual suggestions, is a point not often enough considered. The teacher cannot, perhaps, except indirectly, prevent the reading of such trash at home. But every influence which he can bring to bear towards the formation of a purer and more correct taste, he should never omit. Where there is a public library in the town, he should make himself acquainted with its contents, and give the children direct help in their selection of books.
This is an external means. But he should never forget that every influence which he can bring to bear in his daily work to make science pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in the use of pure, correct English, free from exaggeration, from slang, and from mannerism, goes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash distasteful even to the child himself.
Every example of thorough work, every pleasure that comes from the solving of a problem or the acquisition of a new fact, is so much fortification against the advances of the enemy; while all shallow half work, all pretence or show tend to create an appetite in the child's mind which shall demand such food.
The true teacher should always have in his mind these far-away and subtle effects of his teaching; not present good or pleasure either for himself or his pupil, but the far-off good—the distant development. That idea would free him from the notion, too common in our day, that the success or failure of his efforts is to be tested by any adroitly contrived system of examinations; or still worse, exhibitions. His success can alone be tested by the future lives of his pupils—by their love for, or dislike of, new knowledge. His success will be marked by their active growth through all their lives; his failure, by their early arrested development.