Dr. Maxwell's criticisms.
"There are those to-day who claim that sexual information and problems should be thrust upon the attention of boys and girls by the teachers in the public schools, that this teaching is necessary for the protection of virtue and the prevention of disease, and that, if anyone hesitates to encourage the spread of such literature and the teaching of such knowledge, he is an arrant and presumptuous blockhead. The arrogance of the extreme advocates of child hygiene blinds them to certain all-important truths. The first is that our teachers are not prepared, and, in too many cases, are not the most suitable persons to teach the subject. The second is that to bring the adolescent mind face to face with sexual matters engenders the habit of dwelling upon the sexual passion, and in that may lie spiritual havoc and physical ruin. A premature interest in the sexual passion debases the mind and unsettles the will. The third is that parents have no right to ask the teacher to do the work that is peculiarly theirs.
"And yet some good may emerge from this discussion. Parents may be incited to do their duty in placing sex information before their children whenever conditions demand such knowledge. And principals and teachers, particularly principals, whenever they have the acuteness to detect the tendency to wrong-doing, will no longer hesitate to utter the word of warning in season. As for the extravagant claims made for the teaching of sex-hygiene, I have too much faith in the good sense of the American people to believe that it will ever be generally and regularly taught in American schools. Surely, we have learned something since the law compelled us to teach the untruths regarding the effects of stimulants and narcotics that were published in the early school manuals of physiology and hygiene."
Reply to Dr. Maxwell.
I comment as follows: (1) Dr. Maxwell refers only to the "extreme advocates." They did exist in abundance a few years ago, but are already rare in the group of well-known educators. (2) Most teachers are not prepared and never can be prepared to teach the human aspect of sex problems, especially the hygienic in the strict sense. (3) Conservative sex-instruction such as was advocated by the advisers of the American Federation for Sex-hygiene (see "Report" by Morrow and others, 1913) aims to guard against "premature interest in the sexual passion." (4) While I sympathize with Dr. Maxwell's view that teaching the elementary hygiene of sex is the parent's duty, I am forced to recognize the futility of advocating that all or even a respectable minority of parents should undertake their duty (see § 4). The truth is that most of them will not, and cannot if they will, try to do so. (5) Dr. Maxwell's idea that sex-hygiene should be taught only when an astute principal or parent "detects wrong-doing" is, to say the least, an educational theory that will astonish one who knows even the elementary facts regarding the secrecy of the sexual life of young people in general. Will he next be logically consistent and advocate that all moral education should be given only after children show signs of wrong-doing? (6) Sex-hygiene, as Dr. Maxwell understands it to be concerned directly and solely with human sexual problems, will never be taught in American schools controlled by people of good sense; but sex-instruction from the larger viewpoint is taught in some of the best of Dr. Maxwell's high schools. (7) All advocates of sex-instruction who have a national reputation for educational sanity agree that legislation is most undesirable. (8) It is obvious that like so many others who have become confused regarding the sex-education movement, Dr. Maxwell has been impressed chiefly by the pioneer work that emphasized only hygienic teaching regarding sex.
§ 48. Lubricity in Education
Ex-President Taft has expressed his views against the sex-education movement. The newspapers quote as follows from an address delivered in Philadelphia in 1914:
"There is another danger in our educational influences and environment. I refer to the spread of lubricity in literature, on the stage and indirectly in education, under the plea that vice may be avoided by teaching the awful consequences. By dwelling on its details and explaining its penalties, sexual subjects are obtruded into discussion between the sexes, lectures are delivered on them, textbooks are written, and former restraints of modesty are abandoned.
Mr. Taft's alarm.
"The pursuit of education in sex-hygiene is full of danger if carried on in general public schools. The sharp, pointed and summary advice of mothers to daughters, of fathers to sons, of a medical professor to students in a college upon such a subject is, of course, wise, but any benefit that may be derived from frightening students by dwelling upon the details of the dreadful punishment of vice is too often offset by awakening a curiosity and interest that might not be developed so early and is likely to set the thoughts of those whose benefit is at stake in a direction that will neither elevate their conversations with their fellows nor make more clean their mental habit.