The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Science
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Sex instruction
4. Since it is not ignorance of what is right, but rather the will to do
the right, that is usually responsible for sexual delinquency among
adults, the program of public education must include more effective moral
education in all grades of all schools; every subject, properly taught, is
a means of cultivating will power, of strengthening character; but the
school curriculum is now made to yield but a small part of its
possibilities.
5. The appeal must be made to self-respect and to chivalry; especially
through history and literature the idea of sex must be spiritualized; the
right education of the emotions is fundamental.[68]
6. Through the study of heredity and eugenics, the social responsibility
of the individual may be made to serve as a higher incentive for right
conduct than the fear of disease.
7. If there is one truth concerning sex education that needs emphasis
above all others, it is that all plans for meeting the social emergency
must strengthen the control of moral and spiritual law over sex impulses;
otherwise sex education may be antagonistic not only to physical health,
but as well to the highest development of personality and to the
progressive evolution of human society.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] The best expression of the consensus of opinion of those who should
know most about the subject is the _Report of the Special Committee on the
Matter and Methods of Sex Education_ issued by the American Federation for
Sex Hygiene, New York, December, 1912.
[62] _Sex Education_, by Ira S. Wile, M.S., M.D. (New York, 1912), aims to
assist parents to banish the difficulties and to suggest a course of
instruction. It is a brief and wholly admirable treatise.
[63] _Progress_, the second annual report of the Oregon Social Hygiene
Society, gives some account of the most extensive public education that
has been conducted in this country.
[64] The Exhibit of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society has been seen by
over 50,000 people, at a total cost of less than two cents for each
person.
[65] Especially valuable are the two volumes by Abraham Flexner, written
for the Bureau of Social Hygiene. See List of References.
[66] See _American Youth_, New York, April, 1913 ("Sex Education Number").
An article by George W. Hinckley tells of the ideal way in which he gives
individual instruction to his boys at Good Will Farm, Hinckley, Maine.
[67] "Sex-instruction as a Phase of Social Education," in _Religious
Education_, 1913, by Maurice A. Bigelow, is one of the best articles on
this subject.
[68] F.W. Foerster, _Marriage and the Sex Problem._ No book on this
subject has reached a higher plane of idealism. At the same time it is
scientifically sound.
LIST OF REFERENCES
CHAPTERS I, II
GENERAL SURVEY
_Prepared by Maida Rossiter, Librarian, Reed College_
Addams, Jane. _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._ New York, 1912.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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