[Sidenote: Emphasis on social disease.]
Since the revelations concerning the disastrous physical effects of
sexual immorality, especially as it exists in the commercialized
conditions of the social evil, have had the chief influence in
awakening intelligent people from their age-long ignorance and
indifference concerning the great sex problems, it was natural that
those who first proposed special instruction should have emphasized the
social evil and its diseases so much as to create the widespread but
erroneous impression that the great aim of sex-education is to teach
the distressing facts concerning the pathological consequences of
immorality.
[Sidenote: Other problems need emphasis.]
Now, without in the least underestimating the vast importance of the
emphasis placed on sexual immorality and social diseases in the
splendid pioneer work of the late Dr. Morrow and others for the
sex-education movement, and without suggesting that these topics should
be neglected while reorganizing the educational attack on sex problems,
I believe that so far as formal instruction in homes, schools, and
colleges is concerned, we may gain a decided advantage if we now
recognize and declare boldly that the physical effects of the diseases
arising from the social evil constitute _only one of several_ groups of
sex problems that organized education should attempt to solve.
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:
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: Order of importance of aims.]
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.
[Sidenote: 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.