Adolescents," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more
narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach
religion to children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (_Independent
Review_, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough
to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who
acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would
generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points
out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of
charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should
first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and
the more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of
the clergy who are brought in contact with children a preliminary course
of child-study, with the necessary physiology and psychology, should be
compulsory.
[175] The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly
presented by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the _Mysteries Pagan
and Christian_.
[176] Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908--a
very representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or
anti-clericals, and marked by great moderation and good sense--a
resolution was passed against religious teaching in primary schools,
though a subsequent resolution declared by a very large majority in
favour of teaching the history of religions in secondary schools. These
resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those persons who still
cherish the superstition that in matters of religion women are blindly
prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.
[177] See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular
Education League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," _Nineteenth
Century_, April, 1911.
[178] So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire,
the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.
[179] "Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (_Clinical Journal_, 7th
June, 1899), "I heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children
should learn nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her
nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions
which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with
Jack-the-Giant-Killer."
[180] In his interesting study of comparative education (_The Making of
Citizens_, 1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after
discussing the methods of settling the difficulties of religious
education in England, America, Germany, and France, reasonably
concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the schools of
these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found
not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical
training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral
principles underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed,
the school, to justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will
teach them, not dogmatically or by precept, but by example, and by the
creation of a noble atmosphere around the child." Holmes also (_op.
cit._, p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism and citizenship
must be informal and indirect.
VIII
THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HYGIENE
The New Movement for giving Sexual Instruction to Children--The
Need of such a Movement--Contradictions involved by the Ancient
Policy of Silence--Errors of the New Policy--The Need of Teaching
the Teacher--The Need of Training the Parents--And of
Scientifically equipping the Physician--Sexual Hygiene and
Society--The far-reaching Effects of Sexual Hygiene.
It is impossible to doubt the vitality and the vigour of the new
movement of sexual hygiene, especially that branch of it concerned with
the instruction of children in the essential facts of life.[181] In the
eighteenth century the great educationist, Basedow, was almost alone
when, by practice and by precept, he sought to establish this branch of
instruction in schools.[182] A few years ago, when the German Dürer Bund
offered prizes for the best essays on the training of the young in
matters of sex, as many as five hundred papers were sent in.[183] We may
say that during the past ten years more has been done to influence
popular feeling on this question than during the whole of the preceding
century.
Whenever we witness a sudden impulse of zeal and enthusiasm to rush into
a new channel, however admirable the impulse may be, we must be prepared
for many risks and perhaps even a certain amount of damage. This is,
indeed, especially the case when we are concerned with a new activity in
the sphere of sex. The sexual relationships of life are so ancient and
so wide, their roots ramify so complexly and run so deep, that any
sudden disturbance in this soil, however well-intentioned, is certain to
have many results which were not anticipated by those responsible for
it. Any movement here runs the risk of defeating its own ends, or else,
in gaining them, to render impossible other ends which are of not less
value.
In this matter of sexual hygiene we are faced at the outset by the fact
that the very recognition of any such branch of knowledge as "sexual
hygiene" involves not merely a new departure, but the reversal of a
policy which has been accepted, almost without question, for centuries.
Among many primitive peoples, indeed, we know that the boy and girl at
puberty are initiated with solemnity, and even a not unwholesome
hardship, into the responsibilities of adult life, including those which
have reference to the duties and privileges of sex.[184] But in our own
traditions scarcely even a relic of any such custom is preserved. On the
contrary, we tacitly maintain a custom, and even a policy, of silent
obscurantism. Parents and teachers have considered it a duty to say
nothing and have felt justified in telling lies, or "fairy tales," in
order to maintain their attitude. The oncoming of puberty, with its
alarming manifestations, especially in the girl, has often left them
unmoved and still silent. They have taken care that our elementary
textbooks of anatomy and physiology, even when written by so independent
and fearless a pioneer as Huxley, should describe the human body
absolutely as though the organs and functions of reproduction had no
existence. The instinct was not thus suppressed; all the inevitable
stimulations which life furnishes to the youthful sexual impulse have
continued in operation.[185] Sexual activities were just as liable to
break out. They were all the more liable to break out, indeed, because
fostered by ignorance, often unconscious of themselves, and not held in
check by the restraints which knowledge and teaching might have
furnished. This, however, has seemed a matter of no concern to the
guardians of youth. They have congratulated themselves if they could
pilot the youths, and especially the maidens, under their guardianship
into the haven of matrimony not only in apparent chastity, but in
ignorance of nearly everything that marriage signifies and involves,
alike for the individual and the coming race.
This policy has been so firmly established that the theory of it has
never been clearly argued out. So far as it exists at all, it is a
theory that walks on two feet pointing opposite ways: sex things must
not be talked about because they are "dirty"; sex things must not be
talked about because they are "sacred." We must leave sex things alone,
they say, because God will see to it that they manifest themselves
aright and work for good; we must leave sex things alone, they also say,
because there is no department in life in which the activity of the
Devil is so specially exhibited. The very same person may be guilty of
this contradiction, when varying circumstances render it convenient.
Such a confusion is, indeed, a fate liable to befall all ancient and
deeply rooted _tabus_; we see it in the _tabus_ against certain animals
as foods (as the Mosaic prohibition of pork); at first the animal was
too sacred to eat, but in time people came to think that it is too
disgusting to eat. They begin the practice for one reason, they continue
it for a totally opposed reason. Reasons are such a superficial part of
our lives!
Thus every movement of sexual hygiene necessarily clashes against an
established convention which is itself an inharmonious clash of
contradictory notions. This is especially the case if sexual hygiene is
introduced by way of the school. It is very widely held by many who
accept the arguments so ably set forth by Frau Maria Lischnewska, that
the school is not only the best way of introducing sexual hygiene, but
the only possible way, since through this channel alone is it possible
to employ an antidote to the evil influences of the home and the
world.[186] Yet to teach children what some of their parents consider as
too sacred to be taught, and others as too disgusting, and to begin this
teaching at an age when the children, having already imbibed these
parental notions, are old enough to be morbidly curious and prurient, is
to open the way to a complicated series of social reactions which demand
great skill to adjust.
Largely, no doubt, from anxiety to counterbalance these dangers, there
has been a tendency to emphasize, or rather to over-emphasize, the moral
aspects of sexual hygiene. Rightly considered, indeed, it is not easy to
over-value its moral significance. But in the actual teaching of such
hygiene it is quite easy, and the error is often found, to make
statements and to affirm doctrines--all in the interests of good morals
and with the object of exhibiting to the utmost the beneficial
tendencies of this teaching--which are dubious at the best and often at
variance with actual experience. In such cases we seem to see that the
sexual hygienist has indeed broken with the conventional conspiracy of
silence in these matters, but he has not broken with the conventional
morality which grew out of that ignorant silence. With the best
intention in the world he sets forth, dogmatically and without
qualification, ancient half-truths which to become truly moral need to
be squarely faced with their complementary half-truths. The inevitable
danger is that the pupil sooner or later grasps the one-sided
exaggeration of this teaching, and the credit of the sexual hygienist is
gone. Life is an art, and love, which lies at the heart of life, is an
art; they are not science; they cannot be converted into clear-cut
formulæ and taught as the multiplication table is taught. Example here
counts for more than precept, and practice teaches more than either,
provided it is carried on in the light of precept and example. The rash
and unqualified statements concerning the immense benefits of
continence, or the awful results of self-abuse, etc., frequently found
in books for young people will occur to every one. Stated with wise
moderation they would have been helpful. Pushed to harsh extravagance
they are not only useless to aid the young in their practical
difficulties, but become mischievous by the injury they inflict on
over-sensitive consciences, fearful of falling short of high-strung
ideals. This consideration brings us, indeed, to what is perhaps the
chief danger in the introduction of any teaching of sexual hygiene: the
fact that our teachers are themselves untaught. Sexual hygiene in the
full sense--in so far as it concerns individual action and not the
regulative or legislative action of communities--is the art of imparting
such knowledge as is needed at successive stages by the child, the youth
and maiden, the young man and woman, in order to enable them to deal
rightly, and so far as possible without injury either to themselves or
to others, with all those sexual events to which every one is naturally
liable. To fulfil his functions adequately the master in the art of
teaching sexual hygiene must answer to three requirements: (1) he must
have a sufficing knowledge of the facts of sexual psychology, sexual
physiology, and sexual pathology, knowledge which, in many important
respects, hardly existed at all until recently, and is only now
beginning to become generally accessible; (2) he must have a wise and
broad moral outlook, with a sane idealism which refrains from demanding
impossibilities, and resolutely thrusts aside not only the vulgar
platitudes of worldliness, but the equally mischievous platitudes of an
outworn and insincere asceticism, for the wise sexual hygienist knows,
with Pascal, that "he who tries to be an angel becomes a beast," and is
less anxious to make his pupils ineffective angels than effective men
and women, content to say with Browning, "I may put forth angels'
pinions, once unmanned, but not before"; (3) in addition to sound
knowledge and a wise moral outlook, the sexual hygienist must possess,
finally, a genuine sympathy with the young, an insight into their
sensitive shyness, a comprehension of their personal difficulties, and
the skill to speak to them simply, frankly, and humanly. If we ask
ourselves how many of the apostles of sexual hygiene combine these
three essential qualities, we shall probably not be able to name many,
while we may suspect that some do not even possess one of the three
qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene,
to be carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less
active co-operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents,
teachers, and doctors are in these matters at present all alike
untrained, and usually prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers
through which sexual hygiene must at first pass.
It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that, in thus pointing out some
of the difficulties and the risks which must assail every attempt to
introduce an element of effective sexual hygiene into life, I am far
from wishing to argue that it is better to leave things as they are.
That is impossible, not only because we are realizing that our system of
incomplete silence is mischievous, but because it is based on a
confusion which contains within itself the elements of disruption. We
have to remember, however, that the creation of a new tradition cannot
be effected in a day. Before we begin to teach sexual hygiene the
teachers must themselves be taught.
There are many who have insisted, and not without reason, on the right
of the parent to control the education of the child. Sexual hygiene
introduces us to another right, the right of the child to control the
education of the parents. For few parents to-day are fitted to exercise
the duty of training and guiding the child in the difficult field of sex
without preliminary education, and such education, to be real and
effective, must begin at an early age in the parents' life.[187]
The school teacher, again, on whom so many rely for the initial stage in
sexual hygiene, is at present often in almost exactly the same stage of
ignorance or prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The
teacher has seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary
scientific knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual
hygiene, and is more often than not without that personal experience of
life in its various aspects which is required in order to teach wisely
in such a difficult field as that of sex, even if the principle is
admitted that the teacher in class, equally whether addressing one sex
or both sexes, is not called upon to go beyond the scientific, abstract,
and objective aspects of sex.
This difficulty of the lack of suitable teachers is not, indeed,
insuperable. It would be largely settled, no doubt, if a wise and
thorough course of sexual hygiene and puericulture formed part of the
training of all school teachers, as, in France, Pinard has proposed for
the Normal schools for young women. Dr. W.O. Henry, in a paper read
before the Nebraska State Medical Association in May, 1911, put forward
the proposal: "Let each State have one or more competent physicians
whose duty it shall be to teach these things to the children in all the
public schools of the State from the time they are eight years of age.
The boys and girls should be given the instruction separately by means
of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views, beginning with the lower
forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing with the organs in man.
These lectures and illustrations should be given every year to all the
boys and girls separately, having those from eight to ten together at
one time, and those from ten to twelve, and those from over twelve to
sixteen." Dr. Henry was evidently not aware that the principle of a
special teacher appointed by Government to give special instruction in
matters of sex in all State schools had already been adopted in Canada,
in the province of Ontario; the teacher thus appointed goes from school
to school and teaches the elements of sexual physiology and anatomy, and
the duty of treating sexual matters with reverence, to classes of boys
and of girls from the age of ten. The course is not compulsory, but any
School Board may call upon the special teacher to deliver the lectures.
This appointment has met with so much approval that it is proposed to
appoint further teachers on the same lines, women as well as men.
It is not necessary that the school teacher of sex should be a
physician. For personal and particular advice on the concrete
difficulties of sex, however, as well as for the more special and
detailed hygiene of the sexual relationship and the precautions demanded
by eugenics, we must call in the physician. Yet none of these things so
far enter the curriculum through which the physician passes to reach
his profession; he is often only a layman in relation to them. Even if
we are assured that these subjects form part of his scientific
equipment, that fact by no means guarantees his tact, sympathy, and
insight in addressing the young, whether by general lectures or
individual interviews, both these being forms of imparting sexual
hygiene for which we may properly call upon the physician, especially
towards the end of the school or college course, and at the outset of
any career in the world.[188]
Undoubtedly we have amongst us many mothers, teachers, and physicians
who are admirably equipped to fulfil their respective parts--elementary,
secondary, and advanced--in the work of sexual hygiene. But so long as
they are few and far apart their influence is negatived, if it is not
even rendered harmful.
It must often be useless for a mother to instil into her little boy
respect for his own body, reverence for the channel of motherhood
through which he entered the world, any sense of the purity of natural
functions or the beauty of natural organs, if outside his home the
little boy finds that all other little boys and girls regard these
things as only an occasion for sniggering. It is idle for the teacher to
describe plainly the scientific facts of sex as a marvellous culmination
in the natural unfolding of the world if, outside the schoolroom, the
pupil finds that, in the newspapers and in the general conversation of
adults, this sacred temple is treated as a common sewer, too filthy to
be spoken of, and that the books which contain even the most necessary
descriptions of it are liable to be condemned as "obscene" in the law
courts.[189] It is vain for the physician to explain to young men and
women the subtle and terrible nature of venereal poisons, to declare the
right and the duty of both partners in marriage to know, authoritatively
and beforehand, the state of each other's health, or to warn them that a
proper sense of responsibility towards the race must prevent some
ill-born persons from marrying, or at all events from procreating, if
the young man and woman find, on leaving the physician, that their
acquaintances are prepared to accept all these risks, light-heartedly,
in the dark, in a heedless dream from which they somehow hope there will
be no awful awakening.
The moral to which these observations point is fairly clear. Sex
penetrates the whole of life. It is not a branch of mathematics, or a
period of ancient history, which we can elect to teach, or not to teach,
as may seem best to us, which if we teach we may teach as we choose, and
if we neglect to teach it will never trouble us. Love and Hunger are the
foundations of life, and the impulse of sex is just as fundamental as
the impulse of nutrition. It will not remain absent because we refuse to
call for its presence, it will not depart because we find its presence
inconvenient. At the most it will only change its shape, and mock at us
from beneath masks so degraded, and sometimes so exalted, that we are no
longer able to recognize it.
"People are always writing about education," said Chamfort more than a
century ago, "and their writings have led to some valuable methods. But
what is the use, unless side by side with the introduction of such
methods, corresponding reforms are not introduced in legislation, in
religion, in public opinion? The only object of education is to conform
the child's reason to that of the community. But if there is no
corresponding reform in the community, by training the child to reason
you are merely training him to see the absurdity of opinions and customs
consecrated by the seal of sacred authority, public or legislative, and
you are inspiring him with contempt of them."[190] We cannot too often
meditate on these wise words.
It is useless to attempt to introduce sexual hygiene as a subject apart,
and in some respects it may be dangerous. When we touch sex we are
touching sensitive fibres which thrill through the whole of our social
organism, just as the touch of love thrills through the whole of the
bodily organism. Any vital reform here, any true introduction of sexual
hygiene to replace our traditional policy of confused silence, affects
the whole of life or it affects nothing. It will modify our social
conventions, enter our family life, transform our moral outlook, perhaps
re-inspire our religion and our philosophy.
That conclusion need by no means render us pessimistic concerning the
future of sexual hygiene, nor unduly anxious to cling to the policy of
the past. But it may induce us to be content to move slowly, to prepare
our movements widely and firmly, and not to expect too much at the
outset. By introducing sexual hygiene we are breaking with the tradition
of the past which professed to leave the process by which the race is
carried on to Nature, to God, especially to the devil. We are claiming
that it is a matter for individual personal responsibility, deliberately
exercised in the light of precise knowledge which every young man and
woman has a right, or rather a duty, to possess. That conception of
personal responsibility thus extended to the sphere of sex in the
reproduction of the race may well transform life and alter the course of
civilization. It is not merely a reform in the class-room, it is a
reform in the home, in the church, in the law courts, in the
legislature. If sexual hygiene means that, it means something great,
though something which can only come slowly, with difficulty, with much
searching of hearts. If, on the other hand, sexual hygiene means nothing
but the introduction of a new formal catechism, and an occasional
goody-goody perfunctory exhortation, it may be introduced at once, quite
easily, without hurting anyone's feelings. But, really, it will not be
worth worrying about, one way or the other.
FOOTNOTES:
[181] For a full discussion of the movement, see Havelock Ellis, _Studies
in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chaps.
II and III.
[182] Basedow (born at Hamburg 1723, died 1790) set forth his views on
sexual education--which will seem to many somewhat radical and advanced
even to-day--in his great treatise Elementarwerk (1774). His practical
educational work is dealt with by Pinloche, _La Réforme de l'Education
en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle_.
[183] The best of these papers have been printed in a volume entitled _Am
Lebensquell_.
[184] The elaborate and admirable initiation of boys among the natives of
Torres Straits furnishes a good example of this education, and has been
fully described by Dr. A.C. Haddon, _Reports of the Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, Vol. V, chaps. VII and XII.