Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922): Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Health appointed by the Hon. Minister of HealthNew Zealand. Committee of the Board of Health
History
Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922): Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Health appointed by the Hon. Minister of Health
New Zealand. Committee of the Board of Health
Sexually transmitted diseases -- New Zealand
The Committee recommend that the Department of Health be asked to
prepare a suitable pamphlet to assist those parents who desire to
instruct their boys and girls on this subject. It is also suggested that
where parents feel themselves unable to undertake the necessary
instruction, the family doctor should be asked to talk to the boys.
Instruction to the girls should certainly come from the mother, but
failing this a little wise counsel and advice from a woman doctor should
be secured.
In regard to the teaching of sex hygiene in schools some interesting
evidence was given to the Committee by Mr. Caughley, Director of
Education, Mr. T.R. Cresswell, Principal of the Wellington College
(speaking on behalf of the Secondary Schools Association), and by some
of the women doctors and others who were good enough to attend as
witnesses.
Mr. Caughley stresses the point that it is not mere knowledge of
physiology that will meet the case. He considers that the most important
thing of all is to establish in the minds of the children noble ideals
with regard to infanthood and motherhood. Lessons in connection with the
care of all birds and animals for their young, with the love and
devotion of parents for their young, with all that is beautiful and
tender connected with the homes of animals and birds, would establish a
kind of reverence about everything that is connected with birth. He
deprecates mechanical, systematic, and consecutive instruction in the
mere facts of sex hygiene, for even the fullest knowledge on this
subject is known to have very little deterrent effect in the temptations
of life. He would rather aim at creating the right atmosphere in a
school, such as would make any coarse or unworthy mention of any of
these matters in the hearing of a child appear more or less repulsive,
and would in general enable him to put in its proper setting any
knowledge that might come to him from various sources.
Mr. Cresswell gave the Committee an extremely interesting _résumé_ of
the answers to a _questionnaire_ which he addressed to the head of every
secondary school in the Dominion. He suggested--(1) That a determined
public effort should be made to rouse parents to a sense of their
responsibility in regard to this matter by means of broadcasted
pamphlets, and that they should be furnished with simple, specially
written leaflets to assist them in giving instruction to their children;
(2) that sex hygiene be made a compulsory subject in all
training-colleges, the instructors being specially qualified doctors;
(3) that regular courses of public lectures be delivered in suitable
centres; (4) that teachers, and especially physical instructors, be
encouraged to stress the value of physical fitness to pupils
collectively, and, where need is indicated, to have private talks with
individuals; (5) that teachers be advised to take every opportunity
during lessons in hygiene, physiology, botany, &c., to give children a
sane and normal outlook on sex matters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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