In the early years of infancy only the parents can impart information about sex to their own offspring, and generally speaking only the mother will be the desirable source of information. This in itself justifies the necessity of the Eugenist demand for educationally preparing girls for motherhood. In the nursery the time for teaching intimate things may be left to date itself. The earliest questions of a child fix the time when the earliest information must be given. When a child asks questions you either tell him the truth or a lie. The truth can be told so delicately that no one need blush to repeat it. A lie may be directly more indelicate and in its future results may be a source of deadly demoralisation. Children ask about the "secret" of birth when a baby brother or sister is born. Their questions and our answers are a frequent subject for jest, when the only reasonable excuse for our failure to impart accurate knowledge is either our own unfitness to teach, or our child's incapacity to understand. If the first is not incurable it should be the object of immediate study with a view to reform. The incapacity of youthful intelligence to grasp elementary facts is greatly exaggerated, but anyhow it is no excuse for deliberate deception. The immature mind can wait for knowledge, its development need not be prejudiced before it begins to know anything. If we cannot feed it on facts at least do not fill it with falsehood.
On entering school the children are introduced to a person whose profession is to teach. How easy now it would be to obtain a child's confidence, how easy to lead a child to believe that there is no hidden knowledge, no subject which is taboo, no function of a healthy body which is unhealthy, and no process of Nature which cannot be made an interesting and helpful study. To impart an unnecessary sense of shame to a child is a shocking outrage from which a sensitive soul never recovers. Exceptional children will require exceptional care but the average child need never know from experience the meaning of sexual shame. Healthy boys and girls will learn that as their parents made them they will one day themselves qualify for all those joys, pains, excitements and interests which are so intimately wrapt round the functions of parenthood. To prepare boys and girls to become parents may seem a big proposition. I am convinced it is practicable, desirable and in the best interests of the race. The human relationship, the human parentage, the human processes should be the foundation of natural history lessons. Botany and biology should be interesting because of their relation to humanity. Information about the human processes of life and sex should not be made contingent on the possibility of divulging it in scattered fragments incidental to remarks on the habits of polar bears or the functions of the stamen and pollen of the flower.
On this subject at least there is no possibility of permanent secrecy. The plan for Eugenic school-teaching is only a plea for the wise, discreet well-timed truth from a capable and trusted source, against indiscreet and often indecently ill-timed half-truth from the worst sources. Children need to be informed, warned and helped.
Why should it be regarded as indecent to give kindly warning against disease? Children are often over sensitive about fancied or discovered differences between themselves and other children, and about natural developments or even small defects which the uninformed mind magnifies into first-class abnormalities. They would often be reassured by learning of the enormous varieties which can exist within the average and the normal. Children should neither be frightened by the well-meant exaggerations which sometimes are used to warn children and growing youth from the very real evil results of self-abuse, nor should such evils be encouraged by a prudish ignoring of the possible danger. Masturbation can be shown to stand in the way of all that youth rightly values in its present happy school life and play, it can be proved to prevent the accomplishment of what every healthy school ideal demands as the future functions of maturity. Restraint is impossible because onanism is essentially a secret vice, and therefore when these appeals to reason, idealism, self-respect, and self-interest fail everything fails. Fear is opposed to the very basis of school honour. If the nobler motives are inadequate the physician is required rather than the teacher, for there is a pathological reason for such abnormal minds. The danger of contracting sexual diseases must be very carefully taught. The body must be saved but the soul must not be simultaneously lost. Sexual disease problems must not be mixed up with sexual morality, or we shall pervert the noblest part of youth. Sexual disease should be referred to, like all other sexual questions, as incidental to the whole subject of the body and its functions, abuses and diseases. The idea that any disease may justly be regarded as a fitting "punishment" for any particular crime, is as evil in its effect as it is vicious in its principle. To encourage the notification of every disease, especially the worst, is a public duty we can only evade at enormous cost in innocent lives. Grappling with the sexual scourge called syphilis is horribly hindered by the reticence, concealment and shame, directly or indirectly to be traced to a mistaken ethic about Nemesis.
To prepare children for parenthood involves finding a reasonable regard for fatherhood as well as for motherhood. No system of economics that relegates fatherhood to unimportance is good for the State. The boy must learn that the father has responsibilities, different from the mother's but worthy of his own very best. Fortunately the pages of history teem with illustrations of this theme for those who desire examples and warnings from the past, it may even be necessary to point out that the father's function has been over valued in our annals as compared with that of the still more important but less praised mother. Inasmuch, however, as the mother's function is so much more continuous than the father's, the perpetuation of such degree of perfection as a boy is endowed with must be secured by constant vigilance, lest he fail in the one great act which earns the right of giving his name to his offspring.
The Eugenic education of girls is generally easier than that of boys for many reasons. Girls see more than boys of the management of a home, they are used to children younger than themselves, they are fond of babies and will nurse dolls for an amusement, deriving much pleasure from a pastime fraught with Eugenic suggestiveness. Later on certain signs of adolescence precipitate explanations and stimulate inquiry. There is no need for any restrictions of the facilities women enjoy educationally. As with boys the best education should be given to those girls who show capacity for using it. It has never been claimed that culture should be withheld from a man, as inconsistent with fatherhood; motherhood must not be made an excuse for denying education. The safest policy is to make preparations for Life independent of preparations for a Career. The don and the bluestocking have to live, so have the cowboy and the cook. All must have the universal knowledge whereby they may serve their race as healthy parents of healthy children, even though the college, the study, the ranch and the kitchen have their own particular technicalities to be mastered by the interested individuals.
Of study in general Eugenics will find much to say. It is impossible to neglect any branch of knowledge. The human will no less than human necessity presses forward in every direction. We may be like King Solomon surrounded by material wealth and possessions, but, like him, if we are forced to choose between them and knowledge, the noblest thing within us will cry for knowledge. We must learn to discriminate between knowledge-values, and endeavour to frame our study-time so that even the least of us may be encouraged to learn all that we can. For those who can rapidly digest huge continents of study the prizes of scholarship are assured. It is not in the interests of Eugenics that knowledge should be acquired with this rapidity by those constitutionally unfitted for the strain. An educational system devised for men may not necessarily be suited to women equally anxious to know and willing to give as long a period to study. It may be found practicable on Eugenic grounds to give more facilities than we do for broken studies, for studies which go slower and last longer, and for studies where the honours are not given to those who can cram most in the least time.
It is impossible for any view of Eugenics in relation to education to ignore the terrible danger of child-labour. Economic consideration of this subject is common enough; it is time that Eugenics made its voice heard in denunciation of a system which cannot fail to demoralise the race if persisted in. The energy of a growing youth is required for building up his own constitution, and if his early labours are spent in occupations inconsistent with physical development he becomes a stunted weakling from whose loins we cannot expect the issue of a noble race. In the case of girl-labour the trouble is intensified, partly because the occupations of young girls are mostly of a description requiring a bodily posture which works untold evil in their future health and fitness. Needlework, laundry-work and typewriting are cases in point. Housework, with which every young girl should be familiar at a reasonably early age, becomes an intolerable check to womanly growth when overdone. Factory life and "home" labour are equally objectionable where children are forced by parental pressure, or the exigences of economic circumstance to earn bread for themselves or to contribute to the family sustenance.
I close this chapter abruptly, fully realising that Eugenic zeal has carried me beyond any narrow view of elementary education, and will inevitably lead the nation into economic controversy. The history of all reform encourages us to persevere. Neither fears of expense, nor metaphysical considerations of parental duty, nor sentimental objections to State intrusion have prevented a nation (when faced with a foreign foe) pledging all its resources, taking sons from mothers and husbands from wives, and using land, railways and stores to prosecute a war deemed necessary for national defence. I am convinced that we have only to realise the national danger and we shall heartily follow the Eugenic lead, even if it costs us the price of a fifth-rate war.