For emphasis, let me briefly summarize these aims of sex-education: (1) Serious, scientific, and respectful attitude of mind on sex questions; (2) personal sex-hygiene; (3) social and ethical and eugenic responsibility for sex actions; (4) relation of immorality and social diseases. I have deliberately, placed these educational aims in this order because it is the order of greatest permanent importance in the sex-education movement; it represents the greatest value to the largest number of individuals who may learn the scientific truth; and it is the order most natural, most logical, and most effective in pedagogical practice with young people.
Relation of aims to problems of sex.
Sex-education organized with regard to these four aims will touch definitely all the eight problems of sex that have been discussed in preceding lectures. The first aim will directly affect the problem of vulgarity and indirectly touch those stated under the third aim. The second aim is obviously directed to the problem of personal health as it may be influenced by the sexual processes of one individual independent of others. Of course, there is also the personal aspect of social diseases, but it is clearer to consider both personal and social aspects of these diseases as a unit in the fourth aim. The third aim is based on five of the eight great problems which involve individual responsibility for the social evil, for illegitimacy, for sexual immorality, for matrimonial harmony, and for eugenics. The social aspects of the venereal diseases obviously involve personal responsibility of the individual in relation to society as well as a personal hygienic problem. Thus, six of the eight great sex problems are essentially social and only those relating to personal hygiene and individual attitude are so distinctly personal as to have only an indirect relation to other individuals, as might be true in case of unharmonious marriage of individuals who are vulgar minded or who have been injured by unhygienic personal habits. Finally, the fourth aim provides for teaching the essential facts that may help individuals protect themselves directly, and society indirectly, against the diseases that awakened the world to the need of sex-education.
Let us turn now to analyze the aims of sex-education and consider how they may be connected with a definite scheme for sex-instruction.
§ 17. The Aims as the Basis of Organized Sex-instruction
I have placed first the aim to develop a serious and respectful attitude toward sex and reproduction because at the root of the sexual problems of our times is the prevailing vulgar interpretation of sex and life discussed in a preceding lecture (§ 11).
Biology and attitude.
Recognizing the great importance of attitude, how may it be influenced by instruction in home or school? The most widely accepted answer is that the best beginning may be made through study of biology (including botany, zoölogy, and physiology) and through nature-study and hygiene taught on a biologic basis. No other method of introduction to sex-instruction is so natural and so likely to lead to a serious, scientific, and open-minded attitude concerning sex. In fact, a large part of the study of reproduction of plants and animals in courses of biology in schools and colleges has its value chiefly in the overwhelming evidence that problems of sex and reproduction are natural and dignified aspects of life. Such biological study determines attitude in no small degree. This is the chief justification for study of the reproductive processes in a series of animals and plants representing stages between the complex development of the highest animals which parallel human life and the lowest forms which the microscope reveals. In all my classes of twenty years in high school and college I have noted a marked development of serious, scientific, and open-minded attitude in response to natural and frank presentation of animal and plant life-histories. Moreover, I have many times requested large groups of students to write freely and frankly concerning the influence of biological courses upon their own attitude; and their papers have strongly supported my observation that study of animal and plant life-histories exerts a profound influence upon the attitude of students towards the human problems of sex and reproduction. If I were stating a defense for biology as one of three or four essential science courses for general education, I should place the greatest emphasis upon the study of animals and plants as a foundation for sex-instruction. Certain critics would reply that all the biological facts that are actually used in the direct human application of sex-instruction could be taught in a few lectures without a year's course in biology; but it is a demonstrated fact that a few isolated lessons do not give the attitude that comes from a good course of biology taught with the view to culminating in special sex-instruction.
Literature and attitude.
Only recently has it been pointed out that one's attitude towards sex may be profoundly influenced by reading certain general literature that holds up high ideals of love and sex and life. It will be most convenient to consider the influence of literature on sex-instruction in another lecture (§ 23).