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 (Sec. 11).
[Sidenote: 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, zoology, 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.
[Sidenote: 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 (Sec. 23).
[Sidenote: Teaching personal sex-hygiene.]
Now let us consider the general bearings of the personal sex-hygiene
demanded by the second aim. For children under ten and twelve the
necessary hygiene should be presented personally (see Sec. 25). For young
people of adolescent years there are four possible ways of instruction
in personal sex-hygiene: (1) It may be added naturally to a course or
series of lessons in general hygiene including the problems of health
for all systems of organs. (2) It may be included in a study of
vertebrate and human reproduction in a course of biology or zoology.
(3) It may be presented by a special lecture that is independent of all
regular courses of study. (4) Special booklets may be put into the
hands of young people. Let us now examine each of these ways:
[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene in general hygiene.]
(1) Sex-hygiene as a natural part of a series of lessons in general
hygiene is most satisfactory when preceded by biological nature-study
or high-school biology in which life-histories of organisms have been
studied for the sake of attitude. At present we lack satisfactory
textbooks for this kind of correlation. There is a strong reaction
against independent courses of hygiene in high schools, and the next
plan is becoming more common.
[Sidenote: Hygiene in biology.]
(2) The inclusion of the necessary hygiene of all organs in courses of
biology or zoology that have emphasized physiology and its bearings on
health is the best arrangement so far proposed and tested in practice.
It has been tried with success by Dr. W.H. Eddy in the High School of
Commerce, New York City, and by other high-school teachers working
along the same lines. The arguments for teaching general hygiene on a
biological basis have been presented in the last chapter of "The
Teaching of Biology in Secondary Schools" by Lloyd and Bigelow, and put
in textbook form in the "Applied Biology" and "Introduction to Biology"
by M.A. and Anna N. Bigelow. However, personal sex-hygiene is not
included in these textbooks, because educational and public opinion do
not yet stand for such radical lessons in books for schools.
[Sidenote: Special lectures on hygiene.]
(3) Special lectures on sex-hygiene independent of biology or general
hygiene are at best makeshifts, and not without dangers. I fear the
effect of the abrupt introduction to sex problems by special lectures,
especially for girls who may be shocked much more than the average boys
can be. I heartily sympathize with parents and school officials who
object to special lectures that suddenly focus attention on problems of
sexual health. It seems to me that special lectures should be given
only when no other method of teaching is possible. This applies
especially to young people who are not in schools. While I have
stressed biological nature-study as offering the ideal basis for the
broadest kind of sex-education, I realize that there are cases where
such study cannot be held prerequisite to some aspects of sex-hygiene
that young people should know. However, we should aim to make such
cases the exceptions and not the rule. Some good may be accomplished by
teaching certain facts of sex-hygiene frankly and directly to those who
have absolutely no knowledge of nature-study and biology; but after
watching the reactions of groups of boys who were receiving such
information, I have been convinced that even with a limit of one hour
for instruction a biological setting is decidedly important in that it
gives an indirect approach.
(4) Special books and pamphlets are useful when, and only when, the
above methods are impossible, but certain cautions are desirable (see
Sec. 22).
[Sidenote: Difficulty in ethical-social teaching.]
The third aim involves some difficult educational problems. Since we
confess that we know so little concerning efficient methods for
ethical, moral, or social teaching, it is evident that we must be far
from a satisfactory plan for dealing with instruction which is intended
to oppose most powerful instinctive tendencies and long-established
habits of sensuality. Clearly the third aim sets no easy task for the
educator; but since the possible solution of sex problems must turn on
the sex actions of the individual in relation to society, the
ethical-social aspects of sex-education must not be evaded because the
way is not yet entirely clear. The fact is that a good beginning has
been made, especially in teaching concerning social diseases, heredity,
and eugenics.
[Sidenote: Social hygiene and ethics.]
The value of all the proposed teaching concerning the relation of
immorality and social diseases is more ethical than hygienic. Read any
of the standard literature on the social side of venereal diseases,
especially the masterly writings of the eminent physician and chief
organizer of the American movement for sex-education, the late Dr.
Prince A. Morrow, of New York City; and one notes that the medical
facts have bearings in two directions. First, they indicate the
desirability of morality as a protection of personal health; and
second, they teach that the pathological results of the individual's
immoral living may be passed on later to innocent wives and children.
The first is as clearly personal hygiene as teaching that impure water
may cause typhoid; but the second is social hygiene and ethics. The
second is more impressive to all but the most selfish people.
There is good reason for believing that information concerning the
social diseases is more likely to impress the average young man through
the social-ethical appeal much more than as a matter of personal
health. Therefore, a biological lesson on social diseases, which may be
presented most logically in connection with other germ diseases, may
have its chief value in that its meaning is social and ethical.
[Sidenote: Biology and ethics.]
As another illustration of biology touching ethics, I have recently
come to believe that the teaching concerning heredity and eugenics,
which should be a standard part of the best sex-instruction, has its
greatest value in the ethical appeal, and not in the direct biological
application of the laws of heredity which underlie eugenics. I realize
that this statement is likely to be disputed by those biologists who
see in eugenics only the possibility of controlling heredity so as to
propagate better strains of humans, just as breeders of plants and
animals have produced better domesticated varieties. A biologist
naturally believes that the ultimate aim of eugenics is improvement
of physical and psychical qualities; but considering the
ethical-social-biological complications of human sex-problems, it seems
improbable that any decided and extensive improvement is likely to
come if we continue to limit our interpretation of the principles of
eugenics to the purely biological standpoint of the breeder of plants
and animals. Let me illustrate by some concrete facts from eugenics:
There is a widespread opinion among science teachers that high-school
biology should present some of the best established facts of heredity;
and that these should be eugenically applied to human life by means of
such illustrations as those afforded by the histories of certain
degenerate families, such as the well-known Jukes and Kallikaks. A
brief sketch of the history of the latter family, as described in Dr.
Goddard's interesting book, "The Kallikak Family" (Macmillan), will
make clear my point as to the ethical appeal of eugenics.
[Sidenote: Eugenics and ethical teaching.]
A young man of good ancestry broke the moral law about one hundred and
forty years ago and became the father of an illegitimate son by a
feeble-minded mother. Of 480 descendants of this son, there have been
46 normal, many immoral, many alcoholic and 143 feeble-minded. The same
man who back in the revolutionary days made a moral mistake which led
to such awful consequences, later married a woman of good family and
became the progenitor of a second line of 496 descendants of whom 494
have been normal mentally, while two were affected by alliance with
another family; and all have been first-class citizens, many of them
prominent in business, professions, etc.
Even making due allowance for the depressing influence of the
environment in which most of the down-and-out descendants in the
degenerate line lived, the comparison between the normal and the
abnormal lines from the same ancestor gives the most convincing eugenic
evidence that has been discovered in the human race. Doubtless it will
long be used as a basis for attempted biological control of the
propagation of the unfit. Many similar cases of hereditary degeneracy
are recorded in books on eugenics.
Such a eugenic record as that of this Kallikak family should be
reviewed in every high school and college in connection with the topic
"heredity" in a course of biology, for it will teach two important
lessons: (1) The biological principle that defects, both physical and
mental, are highly heritable, even for many generations; and (2) the
ethical responsibility for the sex actions of the individual who may
start a long train of human disaster that may visit the children unto
even later than the third and fourth generations. The first lesson is a
purely biological one which suggests the eugenic argument that
defective humans, like undesirable animals and plants, should not take
part in the perpetuation of the species. The second lesson is not
biological but ethical, suggesting individual responsibility for
conduct which may disastrously affect other individuals' lives. It
seems to me that so far as general education is concerned, the ethical
lesson is the more impressive and more likely to lead to voluntary
eugenic practice by individuals. It is my observation that even many
intelligent people are not seriously impressed by the biological
evidences for eugenics considered as a general problem, but their
reaction is one of interest when one begins to present the question of
ethical responsibility for the transmission of physical and mental
defects to future generations. Such considerations have led me to the
view, already suggested, that eugenic studies in courses of biology
have their greatest practical value in their ethical implications,
which, of course, by influencing individual responsibility for
reproduction may lead to the desirable biological improvement of the
human race. Teachers of biology should present, as an economic problem,
the facts which will make better breeds of plants and animals by direct
application of the biological laws of heredity; but they should present
and apply parallel facts to human life in order to influence first of
all individual responsibility for ethical control of reproductive
activity, and thus indirectly work eugenically for an improved human
race.
[Sidenote: Aim of eugenics.]
Thus the aim of eugenics is most likely to be attained through ethical
rather than biological application of the teaching which our schools
can give. The men and women who view life selfishly with no feelings of
ethical responsibility towards others of the present or future will
take no practical interest in the biological problems of human
eugenics, although the economic problems of plant and animal breeding
may interest some of these same people.
[Sidenote: Education and other aspects of sex problems.]
In addition to the ethical-social bearings of biological teaching, our
sex-education will be incomplete until we learn how to attack the sex
problems directly and effectively with reference to the ethical,
social, psychical, and aesthetic aspects. Perhaps we may be able to do
this only with mature people; probably it is too much to hope that even
a serious impression will be made on all intelligent people; but
somehow sex-education must be completed by adequate presentation of
these aspects, for the problems of sex are satisfactorily solved only
in the lives of those fortunate individuals whose vision of the
relation of sex and life combines the viewpoints of biology, hygiene,
psychology, ethics, religion, and last--but far from least--aesthetics.
[Sidenote: Only essential knowledge of social diseases.]
Finally, the educational application of the fourth aim demands some
explanation. Sometime in the adolescent period all young people should
learn the essential facts regarding the two social diseases and their
relation to immoral living. There is the widespread impression that
those advocating sex-education believe in giving great prominence to
the social diseases; but in opposition to this I cite the report of a
committee of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, published in the
_Journal of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis_, January,
1913, and later reprinted as a pamphlet by the American Social Hygiene
Association. In that report there are _twenty-three_ recommendations
concerning sex-instruction; but _only_ one mentions social diseases
and in these words: "During the later period of adolescence ... there
should be given ... special instruction as to the character and dangers
of the venereal diseases." That seems sufficient. It is not desirable
that young people should review the horrible facts relating to
perverted sexuality. Ten or twenty brief and authoritative statements
quoted impressively from medical and social literature ought to give
fair warning of lurking dangers in immoral living. More extensive
information has often proved dangerous. I would gladly advocate that
this dark side of life be kept in sealed books if I did not know that
so many young people need forewarning and definite guidance. Our
educational system will not do its full duty if it fails to offer the
needed help so that it may be obtained by all adolescent young people
who are not so fortunate as to be guided by parents and other personal
teachers.