Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great Subject — John Shaqi
Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great SubjectBaker, La Reine Helen McKenzie
Philosophy
Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great Subject
Baker, La Reine Helen McKenzie
Eugenics
Heredity and environment alike teach this lesson. The child is father
to the man, the parents of to-morrow are now being made. The weak
should learn early their limitations, the strong should be taught how
best to economise their strength. No Eugenist believes in over-emphasis
of sexual knowledge, but every Eugenist believes in the absolute
importance of early familiarity with the essential information of
sex-life. To emphasise this knowledge would mean being guilty of the
same _kind_ of error as is at present prevalent. A knowledge of the
laws of sex should never be separated from other physiological and
moral education, its acquisition should be gradual, its full meaning
should be so well prepared for that its physical manifestations in the
youth of both sexes would be understood, without the necessity of a
sudden jump from abysmal ignorance to overwhelming experience.
Co-education, the schooling together of boys and girls until puberty,
is a step in the right direction. It familiarises children with each
other in quite the best and most innocent manner; it is no more likely
to create evil results than the daily life at home of the perfect
family of boys and girls meeting under the protection of their own
parents.
Co-education renders unnecessary that departing into separate schools
which is so mysterious in early life. It aims at giving girls the
benefit of boys' play, encouraging them in the boys' code of honour,
and tending to prepare them for a citizenship they have to share
with the boys whom they may even now regard as "chums." For boys the
familiarity with girls' ways and girls' characteristics will help
them to be courteous without being weak and to lose that shamefaced
sex-consciousness which is the opposite to a healthy knowledge of the
existence of another sex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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