This club will begin by correcting the most stupid of all our
educational blunders, the assumption of the necessary immaturity of the
young. Our young people nowadays have ten times as much chance to learn
and ten times as much stimulus to learn as we had; and it is a generally
safe assumption that they know much more than we think they do, and are
ready to learn every sensible and interesting thing. I am carrying on an
epistolary acquaintance with a little miss of twelve, who has read half
a dozen of my books--among the "worst" of them--and writes me letters of
grave appreciation. I have talked on Socialism to a thousand school
children, and had them question me for an hour, and heard just as worth
while questions as I have heard from an audience of bankers. Never in my
life have I talked about real things with children that I did not find
them proud to be treated seriously, and eager to show that they were
worthy of that honor. A great part of our foolishness with children is
due to the emptiness of our own heads.
These parents will delegate one man and one woman to make a thorough
study of the sex education of the young. Of course, there is knowledge
about sex which has to be given to the very youngest child, and more and
more must be given as they grow older and ask more questions. But what I
have in mind here is that detailed and precise knowledge which must be
given to the young when they approach the period of puberty. At this age
of fourteen or fifteen the man will take each of the boys apart, and the
woman will take each of the girls, and will explain to them what they
need to know. This duty will not be trusted to parents, for parents have
an imbecile fear of talking straight to their children, and try to get
by with rubbish about bees and flowers. Let every child know that the
days of the hole-and-corner sex business is forever past, and that here
is an instructed person, who talks real American, and knows what he is
talking about, and will deal with facts, instead of with evasions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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