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
Our brief survey of the hygienic problems caused by sexual promiscuity
and its characteristic diseases is sufficient to indicate one great
problem for sex-education. Such social-hygiene problems have been most
responsible for the recent and rapid rise of the movement for
sex-education, and they must be recognized in any adequate scheme for
instruction of young people.
[Sidenote: Is sex-hygiene adequate?]
Can scientific education hope to solve the sexual problems of society
by inculcating such fear of venereal diseases that men will remain true
to the monogamic code of morality? Many cynical disbelievers in
sex-hygiene answer this question negatively by asking in biblical
phrase, "Can the leopard change his spots?" In other words, these
doubting ones believe that sexual instincts are so firmly fixed in the
nature of _many_ men and _some_ women that there is no hope of radical
change through education.[3] There is something in this point of view.
It is probably true that even the most radical advocates of
sex-education do not hope to secure universal monogamy and consequent
disappearance of social diseases. A conservative and rational answer to
the above question whether sex-education can solve the problem of
social diseases, is that a large percentage of even civilized people
are not yet ready to have their most powerful instincts controlled by
scientific knowledge. Hence, there is no hope that the hygienic task of
sex-education will be finished soon after instruction becomes an
established part of general education in homes and schools. At the very
best there will be incomplete returns for the social-hygienic aspect of
sex-instruction, but already we know for a certainty that enough young
men will be influenced to make the teaching justifiable. I feel sure of
this because I have met personally many such men and my friends know
many more.
According to the investigations made by Dr. Exner, the medical
secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, a great reduction
of venereal disease has followed sex-hygienic campaigns in college
towns.
[Sidenote: Medical treatment.]
In another way hygienic teaching may reduce the amount of venereal
diseases, and that is by leading infected individuals to seek thorough
medical treatment without delay. This, of course, will render the
diseased person non-infectious to others. Physicians report that there
is now a marked movement in this direction and, moreover, that many
infected young men voluntarily seek medical examinations before
marriage.
[Sidenote: Woman's need of information.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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