Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
[Illustration: THE STUDY OF INFANT HEALTH IS CONDUCIVE TO
PURE-MINDEDNESS
Note the simple, comfortable, hygienic dress]
Once having made up our minds to concentrate the teaching of sex
hygiene upon sex health rather than upon sex immorality, upon sex
functions rather than upon sex diseases, the chief objection to school
instruction and to instruction in class will disappear. Our school
text-books in history, literature, and biology abound in references to
sex distinctions, sex functions, and sex health. In enumerating the
daily routine of health habits I mentioned daily bathing of the armpits
and crotch. There is nothing in this injunction to offend or injure a
boy or girl. If studies and physical training are to be adapted to
physiological age, and if children are to know why they are graded
according to physiological age as well as mental brightness, we shall
soon be talking of mature, maturing and not-yet-maturing girls and
boys, so that everybody will be instructed in sex hygiene without
offense. Any teacher who can explain the family troubles of King Henry
VIII without becoming self-conscious can easily learn to look a class
of girls and boys in the face and explain how a mother's health will
injure her baby before its birth, why breast-fed babies are more apt to
live than bottle-fed babies, why it is as important for the mother to
keep a nursing breast absolutely clean as to clean the nipple of a
nursing bottle. Words whispered by children, or marked in dictionaries,
to be stealthily and repeatedly looked upon and talked over with other
children, lose all their glamour when pronounced by a teacher.
In these days of state subsidy of school libraries the child is hard to
find who has not free access to books of fiction full of voluptuous
allusions that make undesirable impressions which only blunt, candid
discussion of sex facts can make harmless. Children now learn, whether
in fashionable private schools or crowded slums, practically all that
is lascivious and unwholesome about sex. For teachers to explain that
which is wholesome and pure will disinfect the minds of most children
and protect them against miseducation.
Class instruction in hygiene is practicable for all matters pertaining
to normal sex health. Girls of thirteen should be taught in classes the
fact and meaning of menstruation, and its grave importance to the
health, in order that they may care for themselves not only before,
during, and immediately after the menstrual period, but throughout the
month, in order that menstruation itself shall not be unnecessarily
painful, enervating, and harmful to efficiency. It is not yet advisable
to discuss dangers peculiar to girls or dangers peculiar to boys in
mixed classes. Generally speaking, it is undesirable that men teachers
discuss girls' troubles with girl pupils. But why should it not become
possible for women teachers to explain health dangers peculiar to girls
to classes of boys?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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