Concerning the other problems that sex-education should touch with great definiteness, it is my personal view that most of those outlined in the preceding lectures will be affected by instruction along five important lines, as follows:
Five lines of instruction.
(1) The scientific truths that lead to serious and respectful attitude on all sex questions. (2) The personal sex-hygiene that independent of social diseases conserves individual health directly or indirectly through sexual normality. (3) The ethical responsibility of individuals for the physical or social or psychical harm of their sexual actions upon other individuals, e.g., in prostitution and illegitimacy. (4) The hygienic, ethical, and psychical laws that promote physical and mental health in monogamic marriage. (5) The established principles of heredity and eugenics which foretell the possible coming of a better race of humans. I believe that in these five lines there are educational problems of present and future greater significance to human health and happiness than are found in the social evil and its diseases, commandingly important though these be. Therefore, in viewing the field of sex-education with reference to the possible usefulness of knowledge in helping individuals solve the vital problems that have grown naturally out of the reproductive function, I believe that we are logical only when we organize our educational aims so as to give scientific instruction concerning the problems of sex in the several lines in addition to the physical or hygienic aspects of the social evil and its diseases.
Four aims.
As I now see in the large the sexual problems which scientifically organized education should attack, the educational aims may be grouped under four general headings as follows:
First and most important, sex-education should aim to develop an open-minded, serious, scientific, and respectful attitude towards all problems of human life which relate to sex and reproduction.
Second, sex-education should aim to give that knowledge of personal hygiene of the sexual organs which is of direct value in making for the most healthful and efficient life of the individual.
Third, sex-education should aim to develop personal responsibility regarding the social, ethical, psychical, and eugenic aspects of sex as affecting the individual life in its relation to other individuals of the present and future generations; in short, sex-education should consider the problems of sexual instincts and actions in relation to society.
Fourth, sex-education should aim to teach briefly to young people, during later adolescence, the essential hygienic, social, and eugenic facts regarding the two destructive diseases which are chargeable to sexual promiscuity or immorality.
Order of importance of aims.