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
Now, without in the least underestimating the vast importance of the
emphasis placed on sexual immorality and social diseases in the
splendid pioneer work of the late Dr. Morrow and others for the
sex-education movement, and without suggesting that these topics should
be neglected while reorganizing the educational attack on sex problems,
I believe that so far as formal instruction in homes, schools, and
colleges is concerned, we may gain a decided advantage if we now
recognize and declare boldly that the physical effects of the diseases
arising from the social evil constitute _only one of several_ groups of
sex problems that organized education should attempt to solve.
Concerning the other problems that sex-education should touch with
great definiteness, it is my personal view that most of those outlined
in the preceding lectures will be affected by instruction along five
important lines, as follows:
[Sidenote: Five lines of instruction.]
(1) The scientific truths that lead to serious and respectful attitude
on all sex questions. (2) The personal sex-hygiene that independent of
social diseases conserves individual health directly or indirectly
through sexual normality. (3) The ethical responsibility of individuals
for the physical or social or psychical harm of their sexual actions
upon other individuals, _e.g._, in prostitution and illegitimacy. (4)
The hygienic, ethical, and psychical laws that promote physical and
mental health in monogamic marriage. (5) The established principles of
heredity and eugenics which foretell the possible coming of a better
race of humans. I believe that in these five lines there are
educational problems of present and future greater significance to
human health and happiness than are found in the social evil and its
diseases, commandingly important though these be. Therefore, in viewing
the field of sex-education with reference to the possible usefulness of
knowledge in helping individuals solve the vital problems that have
grown naturally out of the reproductive function, I believe that we are
logical only when we organize our educational aims so as to give
scientific instruction concerning the problems of sex in the several
lines in addition to the physical or hygienic aspects of the social
evil and its diseases.
[Sidenote: Four aims.]
As I now see in the large the sexual problems which scientifically
organized education should attack, the educational aims may be grouped
under four general headings as follows:
First and most important, sex-education should aim to develop an
open-minded, serious, scientific, and respectful attitude towards all
problems of human life which relate to sex and reproduction.
Second, sex-education should aim to give that knowledge of personal
hygiene of the sexual organs which is of direct value in making for the
most healthful and efficient life of the individual.
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