subsequently issued anew with most of its best
portions omitted,
and it is stated by Schroeder (_Liberty of Speech
and Press
Essential to Purity Propaganda_, p. 34) that the
author was
compelled to resign his position as a public school
principal.
Maria Lischnewska's _Geschlechtliche Belehrung der
Kinder_
(reprinted from _Mutterschutz_, 1905, Heft 4 and 5)
is a most
admirable and thorough discussion of the whole
question of sexual
education, though the writer is more interested in
the teacher's
share in this question than in the mother's.
Suggestions to
mothers are contained in Hugo Salus, _Wo kommen die
Kinder her?_,
E. Stiehl, _Eine Mutterpflicht_, and many other
books. Dr. Alfred
Kind strongly recommends Ludwig Gurlitt's _Der
Verkehr mit meinem
Kindern_, more especially in its combination of
sexual education
with artistic education. Many similar books are
referred to by
Bloch, in his _Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. xxvi.
I have enumerated the names of these little books
because they
are frequently issued in a semi-private manner, and
are seldom
easy to procure or to hear of. The propagation of
such books
seems to be felt to be almost a disgraceful action,
only to be
performed by stealth. And such a feeling seems not
unnatural when
we see, as in the case of the author of _Almost
Fourteen_, that a
nominally civilized country, instead of loading with
honors a man
who has worked for its moral and physical welfare,
seeks so far
as it can to ruin him.
I may add that while it would usually be very
helpful to a mother
to be acquainted with a few of the booklets I have
named, she
would do well, in actually talking to her children,
to rely
mainly on her own knowledge and inspiration.
The sexual education which it is the mother's duty and privilege to
initiate during her child's early years cannot and ought not to be
technical. It is not of the nature of formal instruction but is a private
and intimate initiation. No doubt the mother must
herself be taught.[24]
But the education she needs is mainly an education in
love and insight.
The actual facts which she requires to use at this early stage are very
simple. Her main task is to make clear the child's own intimate relations
to herself and to show that all young things have a
similar intimate
relation to their mothers; in generalizing on this point the egg is the
simplest and most fundamental type to explain the origin of the individual
life, for the idea of the egg--in its widest sense as
the seed--not only
has its truth for the human creature but may be applied throughout the
animal and vegetable world. In this explanation the
child's physical
relationship to his father is not necessarily at first involved; it may be
left to a further stage or until the child's questions lead up to it.
Apart from his interest in his origin, the child is also interested in his
sexual, or as they seem to him exclusively, his
excretory organs, and in
those of other people, his sisters and parents. On these points, at this
age, his mother may simply and naturally satisfy his
simple and natural
curiosity, calling things by precise names, whether the names used are
common or uncommon being a matter in regard to which she may exercise her
judgment and taste. In this manner the mother will,
indirectly, be able to
safeguard her child at the outset against the prudish
and prurient notions
alike which he will encounter later. She will also
without unnatural
stress be able to lead the child into a reverential
attitude towards his
own organs and so exert an influence against any
undesirable tampering
with them. In talking with him about the origin of life and about his own
body and functions, in however elementary a fashion, she will have
initiated him both in sexual knowledge and in sexual
hygiene.
The mother who establishes a relationship of confidence with her child
during these first years will probably, if she possesses any measure of
wisdom and tact, be able to preserve it even after the epoch of puberty
into the difficult years of adolescence. But as an
educator in the
narrower sense her functions will, in most cases, end at or before
puberty. A somewhat more technical and completely
impersonal acquaintance
with the essential facts of sex then becomes desirable, and this would
usually be supplied by the school.
The great though capricious educator, Basedow, to
some extent a
pupil of Rousseau, was an early pioneer in both the
theory and
the practice of giving school children instruction
in the facts
of the sexual life, from the age of ten onwards. He
insists much
on this subject in his great treatise, the
_Elementarwerk_
(1770-1774). The questions of children are to be
answered
truthfully, he states, and they must be taught never
to jest at
anything so sacred and serious as the sexual
relations. They are
to be shown pictures of childbirth, and the dangers
of sexual
irregularities are to be clearly expounded to them
at the outset.
Boys are to be taken to hospitals to see the results
of venereal
disease. Basedow is aware that many parents and
teachers will be
shocked at his insistence on these things in his
books and in his
practical pedagogic work, but such people, he
declares, ought to
be shocked at the Bible (see, e.g., Pinloche, _La
Rèforme de
l'Education en Allemagne au dixhuitième siècle:
Basedow et le
Philanthropinisme_, pp. 125, 256, 260, 272). Basedow
was too far
ahead of his own time, and even of ours, to exert
much influence
in this matter, and he had few immediate imitators.
Somewhat later than Basedow, a distinguished English
physician,
Thomas Beddoes, worked on somewhat the same lines,
seeking to
promote sexual knowledge by lectures and
demonstrations. In his
remarkable book, _Hygeia_, published in 1802 (vol.
i, Essay IV)
he sets forth the absurdity of the conventional
requirement that
"discretion and ignorance should lodge in the same bosom," and
deals at length with the question of masturbation
and the need of
sexual education. He insists on the great importance
of lectures
on natural history which, he had found, could be
given with
perfect propriety to a mixed audience. His
experiences had shown
that botany, the amphibia, the hen and her eggs,
human anatomy,
even disease and sometimes the sight of it, are
salutary from
this point of view. He thinks it is a happy thing
for a child to
gain his first knowledge of sexual difference from
anatomical
subjects, the dignity of death being a noble prelude
to the
knowledge of sex and depriving it forever of morbid
prurience.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that this method
of teaching
children the elements of sexual anatomy in the
_post-mortem_ room
has not found many advocates or followers; it is
undesirable, for
it fails to take into account the sensitiveness of
children to
such impressions, and it is unnecessary, for it is
just as easy
to teach the dignity of life as the dignity of
death.
The duty of the school to impart education in
matters of sex to
children has in recent years been vigorously and
ably advocated
by Maria Lischnewska (op. cit.), who speaks with
thirty years'
experience as a teacher and an intimate acquaintance
with
children and their home life. She argues that among
the mass of
the population to-day, while in the home-life there
is every
opportunity for coarse familiarity with sexual
matters, there is
no opportunity for a pure and enlightened
introduction to them,
parents being for the most part both morally and
intellectually
incapable of aiding their children here. That the
school should
assume the leading part in this task is, she
believes, in
accordance with the whole tendency of modern
civilized life. She
would have the instruction graduated in such a
manner that during
the fifth or sixth year of school life the pupil
would receive
instruction, with the aid of diagrams, concerning
the sexual
organs and functions of the higher mammals, the bull
and cow
being selected by preference. The facts of gestation
would of
course be included. When this stage was reached it
would be easy
to pass on to the human species with the statement:
"Just in the
same way as the calf develops in the cow so the
child develops in
the mother's body."
It is difficult not to recognize the force of Maria
Lischnewska's
argument, and it seems highly probable that, as she
asserts, the
instruction proposed lies in the course of our
present path of
progress. Such instruction would be formal,
unemotional, and
impersonal; it would be given not as specific
instruction in
matters of sex, but simply as a part of natural
history. It would
supplement, so far as mere knowledge is concerned,
the
information the child had already received from its
mother. But
it would by no means supplant or replace the
personal and
intimate relationship of confidence between mother
and child.
That is always to be aimed at, and though it may not
be possible
among the ill-educated masses of to-day, nothing
else will
adequately take its place.
There can be no doubt, however, that while in the future the school will
most probably be regarded as the proper place in which to teach the
elements of physiology--and not as at present a merely emasculated and
effeminated physiology--the introduction of such
reformed teaching is as
yet impracticable in many communities. A coarse and ill-bred community
moves in a vicious circle. Its members are brought up to believe that sex
matters are filthy, and when they become adults they
protest violently
against their children being taught this filthy
knowledge. The teacher's
task is thus rendered at the best difficult, and under democratic
conditions impossible. We cannot, therefore, hope for
any immediate
introduction of sexual physiology into schools, even in the unobtrusive
form in which alone it could properly be introduced,
that is to say as a
natural and inevitable part of general physiology.
This objection to animal physiology by no means applies, however, to
botany. There can be little doubt that botany is of all the natural
sciences that which best admits of this incidental
instruction in the
fundamental facts of sex, when we are concerned with
children below the
age of puberty. There are at least two reasons why this should be so. In
the first place botany really presents the beginnings of sex, in their
most naked and essential forms; it makes clear the
nature, origin, and
significance of sex. In the second place, in dealing
with plants the facts
of sex can be stated to children of either sex or any
age quite plainly
and nakedly without any reserve, for no one nowadays
regards the botanical
facts of sex as in any way offensive. The expounder of sex in plants also
has on his side the advantage of being able to assert, without question,
the entire beauty of the sexual process. He is not
confronted by the
ignorance, bad education, and false associations which have made it so
difficult either to see or to show the beauty of sex in animals. From the
sex-life of plants to the sex-life of the lower animals there is, however,
but a step which the teacher, according to his
discretion, may take.
An early educational authority, Salzmann, in 1785
advocated the
sexual enlightenment of children by first teaching
them botany,
to be followed by zoölogy. In modern times the
method of
imparting sex knowledge to children by means, in the
first place,
of botany, has been generally advocated, and from
the most
various quarters. Thus Marro (_La Pubertà_, p. 300)
recommends
this plan. J. Hudrey-Menos ("La Question du Sexe
dans
l'Education," _Revue Socialiste_, June, 1895), gives the same
advice. Rudolf Sommer, in a paper entitled
"Mädchenerziehung oder
Menschenbildung?" (_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I,
Heft 3) recommends that the first introduction of
sex knowledge
to children should be made by talking to them on
simple natural
history subjects; "there are endless opportunities,"
he remarks,
"over a fairy-tale, or a walk, or a fruit, or an
egg, the sowing
of seed or the nest-building of birds." Canon
Lyttelton
(_Training of the Young in Laws of Sex_, pp. 74 et
seq.) advises
a somewhat similar method, though laying chief
stress on personal
confidence between the child and his mother;
"reference is made
to the animal world just so far as the child's
knowledge extends,
so as to prevent the new facts from being viewed in
isolation,
but the main emphasis is laid on his feeling for his
mother and
the instinct which exists in nearly all children of
reverence due
to the maternal relation;" he adds that, however
difficult the
subject may seem, the essential facts of paternity
must also be
explained to boys and girls alike. Keyes, again
(_New York
Medical Journal_, Feb. 10, 1906), advocates teaching
children
from an early age the sexual facts of plant life and
also
concerning insects and other lower animals, and so
gradually
leading up to human beings, the matter being thus
robbed of its
unwholesome mystery. Mrs. Ennis Richmond (_Boyhood_,
p. 62)
recommends that children should be sent to spend
some of their
time upon a farm, so that they may not only become
acquainted
with the general facts of the natural world, but
also with the
sexual lives of animals, learning things which it is
difficult to
teach verbally. Karina Karin ("Wie erzieht man ein Kind zür
wissenden Keuschheit?" _Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I,
Heft 4), reproducing some of her talks with her
nine-year old
son, from the time that he first asked her where
children came
from, shows how she began with telling him about
flowers, to pass
on to fish and birds, and finally to the facts of
human
pregnancy, showing him pictures from an obstetrical
manual of the
child in its mother's body. It may be added that the
advisability
of beginning the sex teaching of children with the
facts of
botany was repeatedly emphasized by various speakers
at the
special meeting of the German Congress for Combating
Venereal
Disease devoted to the subject of sexual instruction
(_Sexualpädagogik_, especially pp. 36, 47, 76).
The transition from botany to the elementary zoölogy of the lower animals,
to human anatomy and physiology, and to the science of anthropology based
on these, is simple and natural. It is not likely to be taken in detail
until the age of puberty. Sex enters into all these
subjects and should
not be artificially excluded from them in the education of either boys or
girls. The text-books from which the sexual system is
entirely omitted
ought no longer to be tolerated. The nature and
secretion of the
testicles, the meaning of the ovaries and of
menstruation, as well as the
significance of metabolism and the urinary excretion,
should be clear in
their main lines to all boys and girls who have reached the age of
puberty.
At puberty there arises a new and powerful reason why
boys and girls
should receive definite instruction in matters of sex.
Before that age it
is possible for the foolish parent to imagine that a
child may be
preserved in ignorant innocence.[25] At puberty that
belief is obviously
no longer possible. The efflorescence of puberty with
the development of
the sexual organs, the appearance of hair in unfamiliar places, the
general related organic changes, the spontaneous and
perhaps alarming
occurrence in boys of seminal emissions, and in girls of menstruation, the
unaccustomed and sometimes acute recognition of sexual desire accompanied
by new sensations in the sexual organs and leading
perhaps to
masturbation; all these arouse, as we cannot fail to
realize, a new
anxiety in the boy's or girl's mind, and a new
curiosity, all the more
acute in many cases because it is carefully concealed as too private, and
even too shameful, to speak of to anyone. In boys,
especially if of
sensitive temperament, the suffering thus caused may be keen and
prolonged.
A doctor of philosophy, prominent in his profession,
wrote to
Stanley Hall (_Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 452): "My entire youth,
from six to eighteen, was made miserable from lack
of knowledge
that any one who knew anything of the nature of
puberty might
have given; this long sense of defect, dread of
operation, shame
and worry, has left an indelible mark." There are certainly many
men who could say the same. Lancaster ("Psychology and Pedagogy
of Adolescence," _Pedagogical Seminary_, July, 1897, pp. 123-5)
speaks strongly regarding the evils of ignorance of
sexual
hygiene, and the terrible fact that millions of
youths are always
in the hands of quacks who dupe them into the belief
that they
are on the road to an awful destiny merely because
they have
occasional emissions during sleep. "This is not a light matter,"
Lancaster declares. "It strikes at the very
foundation of our
inmost life. It deals with the reproductory part of
our natures,
and must have a deep hereditary influence. It is a
natural result
of the foolish false modesty shown regarding all sex
instruction.
Every boy should be taught the simple physiological
facts before
his life is forever blighted by this cause."
Lancaster has had in
his hands one thousand letters, mostly written by
young people,
who were usually normal, and addressed to quacks who
were duping
them. From time to time the suicides of youths from
this cause
are reported, and in many mysterious suicides this
has
undoubtedly been the real cause. "Week after week,"
writes the
_British Medical Journal_ in an editorial
("Dangerous Quack
Literature: The Moral of a Recent Suicide," Oct. 1, 1892), "we
receive despairing letters from those victims of
foul birds of
prey who have obtained their first hold on those
they rob,
torture and often ruin, by advertisements inserted
by newspapers
of a respectable, nay, even of a valuable and
respected,
character." It is added that the wealthy proprietors of such
newspapers, often enjoying a reputation for
benevolence, even
when the matter is brought before them, refuse to
interfere as
they would thereby lose a source of income, and a
censorship of
advertisements is proposed. This, however, is
difficult, and
would be quite unnecessary if youths received proper
enlightenment from their natural guardians.
Masturbation, and the fear that by an occasional and
perhaps
outgrown practice of masturbation they have
sometimes done
themselves irreparable injury, is a common source of
anxiety to
boys. It has long been a question whether a boy
should be warned
against masturbation. At a meeting of the Section of
Psychology
of the British Medical Association some years ago,
four speakers,
including the President (Dr. Blandford), were
decidedly in favor
of parents warning their children against
masturbation, while
three speakers were decidedly against that course,
mainly on the
ground that it was possible to pass through even a
public school
life without hearing of masturbation, and also that
the warning
against masturbation might encourage the practice.
It is,
however, becoming more and more clearly realized
that ignorance,
even if it can be maintained, is a perilous
possession, while the
teaching that consists, as it should, in a loving
mother's
counsel to the child from his earliest years to
treat his sexual
parts with care and respect, can only lead to
masturbation in the
child who is already irresistibly impell