Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Individual instruction in sex matters should be reserved for the
diseased mind, for the boy or girl who has already been morbidly
instructed. Discussion of immoral sex diseases should be confined to
individual talk. This field teachers have already entered. Repeated
physical examination of children will detect symptoms of sex
abnormality. When detected, the fact and the meaning should be
explained to the individual by school physician, school nurse, or
school-teacher. While much can be done through mothers' meetings and
through individual instruction of parents, the most effective means of
improving the general attitude towards sex health is to give the simple
truth to the millions of children who have not yet left school. Armed
with the A B C's of sex hygiene at school, boys and girls will be
prepared to select employment, associates, and newspapers that will
permit normal, healthy sex development. Men and women who are leading
normal lives, who have plenty of work, sleep, fresh air, nourishing
food, amusement, and exercise are unlikely to be sexually abnormal.
After all, the question of instruction in sex hygiene will quickly
settle itself when it is made a condition of a teacher's certificate
that the applicant shall himself or herself know the personal and
social reasons for sex health. The woman who does not know how to take
care of her own sex health, the man who is ignorant of a woman's
special needs, cannot do justice to the requirements of arithmetic,
language, and discipline. Whether men and women teachers are mentally,
physically, and morally equipped to be sexually normal and to teach the
law of sex health will be disclosed as soon as trustees and
superintendent dare to ask the necessary questions. Whether an
instructor's personality will enable him to fill the minds of children
with interests more wholesome, more absorbing than obscene stories or
morbid sex curiosity can also be learned. When school-teachers are
prepared to teach the social and economic aspects of general health
they will quickly solve the problem of instruction in sex health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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