XI
The Past and the Future of the Sex-education Movement[ToC]
§ 50. The American Movement
Dr. Morrow leader in America.
In America the movement for sex-education began with the organization of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis on February 9, 1905, under the leadership of Dr. Prince A. Morrow. It is true that before this time there were various local and sporadic attempts at instruction concerning sexual processes, but such teaching was chiefly personal and there was no concerted movement looking towards making sex-instruction an integral part of general education. In 1892, thirteen years before the organization of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, a group of members of the National Education Association considered briefly the importance of instructing young people. However, this meeting was of ephemeral significance and had no genetic relation to the present-day movement. Other early interest in sex-instruction is indicated in Professor Earl Barnes's bibliography which was published in his "Studies in Education," Vol. I, p. 301, 1897.
The educational activities, especially the publications of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, soon attracted the serious attention of numerous physicians, ministers, and educators in various parts of the United States; and about twenty other societies for study and improvement of the sex problems were organized within a few years after the original society.
Original aim for sanitary ends.
The sex-education movement both in Europe and America had its origin as an attempt to check the spread of the venereal or social diseases. The idea that education should work for sexual morality for its own sake and not simply for protection against venereal diseases has only recently begun to appear in the literature of sex-education, and so far it seems to have made only a limited impression on many of those who have been active in the prophylactic campaign against social disease. In fact, the tardy recognition of the moral aim of sex-education makes it seem probable that very little interest would have been aroused in the movement if it had been organized on purely ethical grounds and without any reference to the sanitary problems of social diseases. To one who looks at sexual morality as a question of right conduct which brings its own rewards, it is a shock to find so many thinking people who accept calmly the traditional views of the relation of the sexes and seem to take no interest in the immorality of men except as it is likely to lead to venereal disease or to illegitimacy which demands forced marriage or monetary payments. The truth is that the civilized world at large is very far from a working code of sexual morals which will be practiced because of promised rewards rather than because of probable punishments. It is natural, then, that the sex-education movement should have started with a proclamation of physical punishments for immorality rather than an offer of ethical and psychical rewards for morality.
Both sanitary and moral.