The references to "the teacher" in the following are primarily
applicable to those who may be called upon to give sex-instruction as
class work in schools, colleges, churches, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A.,
and other educational organizations.
The chief question for discussion in this lecture is that of selecting
the teacher of those phases of sex-instruction that are directly
related to human life, that is, personal sex-hygiene and sex-ethics. So
far as biological facts of sex are concerned, there are no special
problems such as may not be handled by teachers of biology in general
according to the accepted methods (see Lloyd and Bigelow, "Teaching of
Biology in the Secondary School" and Bigelow, "Teacher's Manual of
Biology").
[Sidenote: Regular teachers if possible.]
As already suggested, a large part of the sex-instruction is simply an
extension of biological science, hygiene, and ethics; and in secondary
schools and colleges should be given by selected teachers of the
regular staff and whenever possible as a part of regular courses. There
may be some necessary modifications to this plan; for example, in
Teachers College the course on sex-education and another series of
lectures on sex-physiology and hygiene for women are open to students
who do not take the biology courses in which the sex-instruction
logically belongs.
[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene and ethics.]
The culminating stages of any complete scheme for formal sex-education
of young people will be sex-hygiene considered in its strict sense as
that special phase of sex-education which deals with problems of
health, and sex-ethics which determines the responsibility of
individuals for control of sexual instincts. While nature-study and
biology and general hygiene may be organized so as to present the major
portion of the facts which should be included in a complete scheme of
sex-instruction in schools and colleges, the application of these facts
to personal life is the most difficult problem of sex-education. In
fact, it is the only real problem, for long before sex-education became
a definite movement the most efficient science teachers were presenting
the fundamental facts on which we now propose to build with certain
hygienic and ethic instruction which directly touches the personal life
of the student. As already said, the human application will require
only a few lessons, preferably in connection with nature-study,
biology, ethics, or hygiene. But although brief, such instruction is
the keystone in the arch of sex-education, and it is very important
that there be no serious mistakes in selecting the teachers.
[Sidenote: Sex specialists not desirable.]
I have mentioned special teachers as necessary for instruction with
direct reference to specialists human life. I hasten to add that I
still agree with the report of the special committee (Morrow, _et al._)
of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene that it is not desirable
that any teacher should make a specialty of this type of instruction
and of no other. We do not want "sex specialists" in the schools (see
pp. 10 and 20-23 of the Report of the Committee). It is important that
all teachers should have general information regarding the sex problems
of young people in order to be able to help individual pupils.
Sec. 21. _Certain Undesirable Teachers for Special Hygienic and Ethical
Instruction_
It will be most helpful if we consider the problem of selecting
teachers with a view to rejecting those who certainly should not
undertake the special hygienic and ethical teaching, for teachers who
are good in other subjects and who are fortunately free from certain
disqualifications discussed in the following, may by means of study
adapt themselves for the final and most important stages of
sex-education.
There are five types of teachers who should be regarded as disqualified
for teaching personal sex-hygiene and sex-ethics.
[Sidenote: Embarrassed teachers.]
First, those men and women who are unable to speak of sex-hygiene as
calmly and seriously as they do of any other phase of hygiene had
better not undertake the instruction of young people. There are many
such men and women among teachers who, so far as scientific training is
concerned, ought to be good teachers of sex-hygiene. As an illustration
of this attitude that leaves the wrong impression with students, it is
reported that a good teacher of hygiene recently prefaced a brief talk
to college girls as follows: "I shall now consider a process that no
cultured woman ever mentions except with bated breath. I refer to
menstruation."
[Sidenote: Abnormal teachers.]
The second kind of people who should not teach sex-hygiene are the men
and women who are the unfortunate victims of sexual abnormality, either
physical or psychical, that more or less influences their outlook on
life. Certain neurotic and hysterical men or women who lack thorough
physiological training and whose own sexual disturbances have led them
to devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological
literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and
Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this
true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led
them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result
of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression--a
diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ten cases. Such a woman
is a very dangerous teacher of sex-hygiene for adolescent girls; and a
positive menace to older unmarried women who, if free from absorbing
work, may spend their leisure in becoming more or less restless under
the unsocial, if not unphysiologic, conditions of unwelcome celibacy.
This is no imaginary danger. The reader of this will not be interested
in details, but the author has received from physicians and others
reliable information concerning several extremely abnormal women of the
above-described type who are taking an active interest in the
sex-instruction of young people and are actually suggesting to their
friends among young women the dangerous and untrue doctrine that
prolonged celibacy for women results in repressed sexuality that surely
leads to ill health. Such ideas, it is true, are traceable to certain
well-known radical writers on the psychopathology of sex; but we must
remember that the great majority of physicians and other scientific
investigators who have studied such problems refuse to believe that
repressed sex instincts in either men or women do the harm that a few
extremists have claimed. But even if it were known beyond the shadow of
a doubt that repressed sex instincts may injure people, it would be
unwise to intrust young people to instruction by teachers who have a
hypochondriacal interest in such a doctrine of repression. Such
suggestions can do only harm to the vast majority of persons who
receive them. To say the least, it is unfortunate that the
psychopathology of sex has become so widely circulated among those who
are not well trained in physiology and psychiatry.
[Sidenote: Teachers who emphasize sexual abnormality.]
The third kind of people who should not be intrusted with teaching
sex-hygiene are the men and women who, without a scientific
perspective, have plunged into the literature of sexual abnormality
until they have come to think that knowledge concerning perverted life
is an important part of sex-education for young people, especially for
those of post-adolescent years. I know of teachers and physicians who
advise young people not much over twenty years of age to read such
psychopathological works as those of Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and Freud,
and various works dealing with commercialized vice. Here is a grave
danger. The less that people without professional use for knowledge of
sexual pathology know concerning it, the better it will be for their
peace of mind and possibly for their morals. Therefore, I urge that he
who enthusiastically studies the abnormalities of sex life without
reference to scientific research or professional demands, is not likely
to be the kind of teacher who will present abnormal life only so far as
is necessary to an understanding of the perfectly normal.
[Sidenote: Pessimistic teachers.]
The fourth kind of people who ought not to instruct the young in
personal problems of sex-hygiene are the men and women whose own
unhappy romances or married life, or whose knowledge of vice
conditions, have made them pessimistic concerning sex-problems. There
are in our schools and colleges to-day some such men and many such
women, and there will be danger for young people when the growing
freedom of expression allows these sexual pessimists to impress their
own hopeless philosophy of sex upon students. The educational world
does not need such teachers, but rather those who can follow the late
Dr. Morrow in seeing a bright side of life that almost dispels the
darkness of sexual errors.
[Sidenote: Teachers not respected by pupils.]
The fifth kind of persons who ought not to teach the personal side of
sex-hygiene are those who cannot command the most serious respect of
their pupils. This applies especially to many men teachers whose
flippant attitude and even questionable living are not likely to help
their pupils, especially boys, towards a satisfactory interpretation of
sex problems. Of course, such teachers ought not be in schools at all,
but the fact is that for various reasons they sometimes get there and
stay there; and so they must be weighed by the school official who
selects the teachers to be intrusted with special problems of
sex-education.
[Sidenote: No instruction without satisfactory teachers.]
Summarizing, I have in this lecture aimed to warn the school
administrator, and others who must select teachers of classes, against
the kinds of teachers who ought not be chosen for presenting the
special problems of sex-education, especially those of sex-hygiene and
sex-ethics. I have pointed out that there are five serious
disqualifications; and it is probable that if strictly applied when
choosing teachers for special sex-instruction, there will be
elimination of three or four in every ten of those whose training in
science might be expected to qualify them as teachers of this special
line. It is a fair question as to what a school or other institution
should do if it has no teachers who are free from the above
disqualifications. My own belief is that it is better to get an
outsider for the handling of the special problems. If this is
impracticable, then suggest to the students that they read certain
books such as are recommended in the last sections of this book. Even
entire omission of the study of the personal and social aspects of
sex-hygiene and sex-ethics is far wiser than intrusting a class to a
teacher with one or more of the negative qualifications that we have
been considering in this lecture. The effect of sex-education upon
individual lives will in no small degree depend upon the impression
made by the living teacher who deals with the difficult problems of sex
in relation to hygiene and ethics. Hence, the greatest care should be
taken when selecting the teacher for this all-important part of the
student's sex-education.
V