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
I have used "The Idylls of the King" as an illustration because they
are so many-sided in sex problems; but much other great literature may
be made to help young people to high ideals of relationships between
men and women. I have emphasized the place of such literature in the
larger sex-education because I have come to believe that interpretation
of life either real or in great literature may have profound influence
in the development of one's philosophy of life. As a matter of
educational procedure insuring that young people will learn to
interpret life, especially those aspects that the larger sex-education
touches so definitely, there appears to be no more natural and
unobtrusive way of approach than that offered by the study of
literature. I am convinced that many teachers of literature may be
efficient workers in the cause of the larger sex-education,
supplementing the scientific teaching in the ethical lines where
science is admittedly weak, if not helpless. It is to be hoped that
numerous teachers will soon grasp this opportunity. If they will study
the sex-education movement in order to get its general bearings and
will teach the sex aspect of literature on a basis of high ideals of
life and love, we need have no fear as to the culmination of the
instruction which properly begins with study of the biological facts of
life in its sexual aspects and leads on and on to its climax in the
ethical aspects of the individual's sex life in relation to other
individuals, that is, to society.
[Sidenote: Not to be labeled "sex-education."]
I take it for granted that no teacher of literature who contributes to
sex-instruction will let the students know that the emphasis placed on
great life problems is part of a conspiracy of parents and educators to
give in the name of sex-education instruction that will help prepare
the individual for facing the problems. Here, as elsewhere, the young
people had better be left unaware that their elders are so interested
in giving them instruction regarding sex problems that they have
organized, for study of ways and means, a movement known as
sex-education.
[Sidenote: Sex tragedies of fiction.]
The abundant literature that points to the moral to be drawn from
sexual tragedies has doubtless influenced thousands of young people. I
have talked with many educated people who confessed to having been
profoundly influenced by such books as Eliot's "Adam Bede," Hawthorne's
"Scarlet Letter," Goethe's "Faust," Hardy's "Tess of the
d'Urbervilles." One might go on and compile an extensive bibliography,
for fiction of all languages of all times is full of the errors into
which insistent sex instincts have drawn men and women who were not
masters of themselves. All standard fiction in which sexual errors and
their penalties are associated may do good as a part of the larger
sex-education, but the teacher should make sure that the young readers
arrive at the correct interpretation.
[Sidenote: Fiction without a moral.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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