=The Question of School Instruction in Sex-Hygiene.--=While the writer does not for an instant underestimate the gravity of the situation, and has only contempt for the nonsense that is palmed off on children about their origin, or the indelicate self-consciousness which puts under the ban the discussion of so serious a problem by adults, still he is not convinced that the universal teaching of the subject to children in schools by the average teacher, as advocated by some, is to be the solution of the matter or is even a wise attempt at solution. Yet he freely admits that he is possibly overfearful of the effects of the undesirable features of such instruction. True it is that all children do learn, frequently at an astonishingly early age, about sex, and their knowledge is usually of an undesirable kind from unreliable and often vicious sources, and it is equally true that parents, either through ignorance or prudery, generally can not be depended on to give the child necessary instruction. But before entering on a wide-spread campaign of undiluted sex-instruction in schools might it not be more prudent to make an attempt toward reaching fathers and mothers and convincing them of the necessity of dealing more frankly and intelligently with their children regarding sex? Even to the novice in psychology the powerful nature of suggestion is known, and with this knowledge before us, is it not wiser to strive in the main to keep the child's mind off of sex rather than specifically to focus it on it by special convocations and discourse? If our psychology means anything, then the worst possible thing we can do for a child is to make him unduly sex-conscious. Something might be done profitably perhaps in schools in an unobtrusive way by specially gifted persons, but the self-conscious way in which most teachers go about topics of sex is certainly not reassuring to the thoughtful observer as regards the benefit derived from such instruction. The one evident method of accomplishing wholesome sex-instruction in schools, devoid of all possibility of undesirable suggestion and sex-consciousness, is in the form of biological work where plants and animals are studied in all their relations, the subject of propagation being taken up in as matter-of-fact a way as the functioning of any other organ system of plants or animals. In such a course, long before the subject of sex in higher animals need be approached the pupil will have developed an attitude of mind which will lead him to see nothing unusual or suggestive in the function of sex no matter where it may be found. Incidentally, inasmuch as the manner in which germs affect living organisms should be studied in such a course anyway, it would be a simple matter to give all necessary information about the dangers of infection from venereal diseases.