Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human lifeBigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Science
Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human life
Bigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Sex instruction
The sex-education movement both in Europe and America had its origin as
an attempt to check the spread of the venereal or social diseases. The
idea that education should work for sexual morality for its own sake
and not simply for protection against venereal diseases has only
recently begun to appear in the literature of sex-education, and so far
it seems to have made only a limited impression on many of those who
have been active in the prophylactic campaign against social disease.
In fact, the tardy recognition of the moral aim of sex-education makes
it seem probable that very little interest would have been aroused in
the movement if it had been organized on purely ethical grounds and
without any reference to the sanitary problems of social diseases. To
one who looks at sexual morality as a question of right conduct which
brings its own rewards, it is a shock to find so many thinking people
who accept calmly the traditional views of the relation of the sexes
and seem to take no interest in the immorality of men except as it is
likely to lead to venereal disease or to illegitimacy which demands
forced marriage or monetary payments. The truth is that the civilized
world at large is very far from a working code of sexual morals which
will be practiced because of promised rewards rather than because of
probable punishments. It is natural, then, that the sex-education
movement should have started with a proclamation of physical
punishments for immorality rather than an offer of ethical and
psychical rewards for morality.
[Sidenote: Both sanitary and moral.]
However, the fact that sex-education, under the name of "sex-hygiene,"
was at first a sanitary propagandism need not interfere with the larger
development of sex-education. It now seems probable that before many
years pass we shall learn how to make a satisfactory combination of
both the sanitary and moral sides of sex-education, and so it is best
that the educational movement started on the foundation of the
undisputed facts of sanitary science which have made a powerful
impression on the people who do and who do not recognize a code of
sexual morals.
[Sidenote: Medical interest.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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