VOL. II. OCTOBER, 1911 No. 4 A STATED MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF SANITARY AND MORAL PROPHYLAXIS WAS HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS AT THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE, 17 WEST FORTYTHIRD STREET, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1911. General subject for discussion: THE TEACHING OF SEX IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. PAPERS BY DR. G. STANLEY HALL, President of Clark University. PROF. MAURICE A. BIGELOW, of Teachers' College, Columbia University. REV. JOSIAH STRONG, of the American Institute of Social Service. THE TEACHING OF SEX IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES, BY G. STANLEY HALL, LL.D. We live in a day of remarkable awakening, both intellectually and morally, concerning sex. On the background of the revelations of biology concerning heredity, especially if acquired qualities are inherited and if heredity is more than environment and education and of the enhanced sociological appreciation of the history and place of marriage and the family, and also of the phallic element in even the higher religions, has appeared four newer factors, viz., the better knowledge of the nature and prevalence of venereal diseases, the insights of the school of Freud, showing the tremendous rôle of sex psychology in both health and disease, not only during sex maturity, but before adolescence, the statistical and other revelations of the prevalence of sex errors among the young, and last, the growing consensus of the competent, especially since the Mannheim Conference, that sex must be taught the rising generation. In my judgment we should, especially in an assembly like this, waste no time in arguing that sex ought to be taught. The time for discussion with prudes and obscurantists and the advocates of laisez faire, laises allez has passed. The fact of the disastrous ignorance of boys and girls and of their need of wholesome knowledge, and that betimes, is sunclear to all who are informed of the facts. We should therefore address ourselves to the practical problem of what topics to teach, how much, in what order, to whom and by whom. The first sex curiosity, especially with girls, is usually as to where babies come from. Wrong answers of the stork type, when its erroneousness becomes known, often causes grave distrust of parents who have deceived them and a resort to other sources of knowledge. This is most common from the age of six or eight to ten or twelve, but may be even earlier. Private wrestling with this question may, especially in precocious and nervous children, cause not only waste of energy possible for years, but may end in psychoses and pathological complexes. This question ought to be answered as soon as it arises, if possible by mothers to daughters and fathers to sons, privately, personally, plainly, briefly and reverently, but few parents will, or are competent to, answer it wisely. Hence, while favoring every agency (of which we happily now have a number) to teach them their duty and how to do it, we must rely mainly upon others than parents. But the needs of prepubescent boys and girls are larger than this. There is a smut element in the atmosphere of schools, and especially of boy life at this age, that has been studied |