The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
Miss Garrett has worked out her talks from years of patient, earnest
work and hours of thought. She can tell us of her methods and can
illustrate, but if we are going to use her methods we have to make them
our own first. We must adapt them to our own experience and apply them
to the experience of those to whom we are giving them.
The same is true of any other speaker on this subject. There is no fixed
method by which a right knowledge of sex in life can be universally
taught. We may learn how to teach biology or physiology, or how to adapt
the law of life and of coming to life in plants or animals to human
laws, but that does not necessarily qualify us to meet the problems of
sex in life or to teach others to meet them. There are a few essentials
to the proper teaching of the meaning of sex in life and if we possess
these we ought to be able to deal with our problems as they come, if we
are capable of using our possessions.
First, a real living belief that our bodies are the “temples of the Holy
Spirit,” a belief which applies to all parts and functions of the body
and makes it a sacred duty to keep them healthy and clean and strong.
Second, an intelligent knowledge of the body as a machine so that we may
use it and not abuse it.
Third, a calm, moderate knowledge of the more common perversions of sex
and their relations to other forms of nervous troubles, and a belief in
human ability to overcome weakness and sin as well as to cure disease.
These things we can learn and keep on learning at lectures, but how to
give them out from our personality to other personalities is for each
person his or her own individual problem. It must be solved by bringing
his or her own experience of life, plus specific knowledge, plus
sympathy, plus common sense, to bear on each problem and so to adapt it
to the understanding of the person in question that it will help the
existing need.
When the Wise Men of Bethlehem presented gifts, each brought his own
gifts, not another’s. They were wise men. If we social workers are wise,
we shall cease to try to gain from others words in which to express the
knowledge of the meaning of sex in life and will bend our energies to
gaining high ideals, simple workable knowledge of the use of the body
and the evils of its abuse and an understanding heart and common sense.
Then we shall be able to bring our gifts to this subject and present it
to those who need it in such forms as to be practical and effective.
A PLEA FOR COMFORT STATIONS
RELL M. WOODWARD
Surgeon United States Public Health Service
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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