CHAPTER VII
educational phases
By Edward Octavius Sisson
The education of youth as it exists has a great gap wherever the subjects of reproduction and sex are concerned. Children are taught at home many things about every other part of their lives, but usually nothing about this; at school they learn the anatomy and physiology of bones and muscles, of sense-organs, and nervous system, of glands and alimentary canal, of respiration and circulation; but a sudden silence falls just before sex is reached. We study everything about life except its origin, and in ignoring that we lose a most fascinating and beautiful field of inquiry, an essential part of knowledge, and a vital element in moral intelligence.[30]
The aims of sex education may be stated in the main as follows:—
(1) The first aim is individual prudence. Every normal human being must undergo crucial tests and solve vital problems in his own sex life. The most beautiful successes of life and its most conspicuous failures are both exceedingly frequent in the realm of sex. The conditions of the sexual life are sufficiently alike in all normal cases so that the experience of the race is valuable to the individual in meeting his own problems. Each child as he passes onward through youth to maturity is treading a road new to him, not lacking in danger and pitfalls, nor without opportunities for great reward. Education must give him all the available advance information concerning the road he is to travel.
(2) The second aim is general intelligence. Sex is a universal element in all living beings, with the exception of the very lowest; it pervades the life of the spirit as well as the life of the body. No man, therefore, can be intelligent concerning things in general without a clear, definite and accurate knowledge of the fundamental facts of sex. One of the strongest new visions concerning sex is the marvelous way in it ramifies into all fields of thought and action. Not a few of the most eminent workers in modern science incline to consider all aspects of human life, including even religion itself, as emanations or processes from the sex basis. Such in particular are G. Stanley Hall in America and Freud in Germany. Without going to such extremes we may still recognize the fact that in all sorts of physical and psychic problems in morals, religion, and sociology, sex plays an important part and must be understood if we are to grasp the situation and its meaning.[31]
(3) The third aim is social enlightenment. The human spirit in our own day is manifestly addressing itself to the solution of the special social problems which involve the sexual life of men. Three of these problems may be specified: (a) The so-called "social evil," including not merely prostitution, but also all other forms of waste and injury through sexual errors; (b) the problem of family life, including marriage and the rearing of children, as well as pathological aspects such as desertion and divorce; (c) the vast problem of eugenics or race culture.
In all these fields the problems of sex are involved. Men and women who desire to bear their whole burden as members of a progressive society must contribute to the solution of these great social problems, and to do this wisely must know something about the basic facts of sex life.[32]