view of the subject as will assure his handling it in all its bearings and with the emphasis on the positive and constructive side; a man who will stress the normal, not the abnormal. It is also highly desirable that he be a deeply religious man. The question of sex is fundamentally a moral question, and no one can adequately deal with this question in its relation to life and character and fail to bring in the dynamic of personal religion.

It is desirable that sex education be related to some definite department of teaching. This relates it to broader subjects, as it should be, and removes undue emphasis on the subject of sex.

In this connection one consideration must be strongly emphasized. It is this: To whatever department the teaching is related, the teacher must go outside the bounds of his particular department if he is going to handle the subject in all its bearings. It is much more than a question of physiology or of hygiene. It is a very large psychological question; it is a sociological question; it has economic bearings and it is fundamentally a moral question.

Another thing that needs emphasis is that the teacher should specially prepare himself for his task. If this is not done the subject is pretty sure to be treated inadequately and too exclusively from the viewpoint of the teacher's particular department of work. The teacher should cover certain fundamental studies on the sex instinct and function so as to enable him to understand and appreciate all its factors, and enable him rightly to interpret the sex life. The institution having decided to assume the responsibility for sex education, and having selected the man to handle the subject, it should say to him something like this: "We want you to thoroughly prepare yourself for this task and we will provide you with the necessary literature. We want you to handle the subject in all its most essential bearings, even though it carries you outside of your particular field. Above all we want you to recognize that this is not merely for the purpose of information or to furnish intellectual exercise. We want this course to bear fruits in character, conduct and high ideals of sex relations and social responsibilities."

DISCUSSION

PROFESSOR MAURICE A. BIGELOW, Teachers College, Columbia University: I very much dislike trying to discuss a paper which I can not radically disagree with. Most of the fundamental propositions laid down by Dr. Exner seem to be as undebatable as a motion to adjourn. I must express my agreement with the main ideas of his paper.

My own experience with sex education for college students has been almost exclusively with mature men and women who were preparing for educational work. I believe that, on the whole, the reasons that Dr. Exner gives for sex education in colleges for men do not apply to a very high percentage of the women college students. Most men in college need sex instruction for immediate use, while most women need it for future use.

Concerning sex hygiene in the limited but accurate field of sexual health, I have very little sympathy with extensive teaching in colleges or elsewhere. It seems safest to give students some carefully formulated but exceedingly brief information regarding (1) The personal hygiene of their own sexual mechanism and (2) warning knowledge concerning the distribution of the infectious sexual diseases; and then leave this field of sexual health whose borderland so treacherously overlaps that of sexual disease. It is unscientific to compare the teaching of sexual health with that of other systems of organs. Now and then a neurotic student becomes hypochondriacal over the health problems of digestion or respiration or nervous activity; but at most these problems are purely personal in all their aspects. Not so with most problems of sexual health. Nine times in ten these involve the immutable instincts of sex, and the hygienic problems are greatly complicated because sexual instincts, unlike all other instincts, are not personal but social. It is in this social-sexual relationship of each individual to others, either in reality or imagination, that study of sexual hygiene may have dangers such as do not enter into any other phase of the science of health. Thus, in brief, I state my objection to any proposition to present to college students more than a brief and carefully guarded study of sexual hygiene in either its personal or social aspects.

While sex hygiene demands relatively little attention in colleges, other phases of sex education should be emphasized. It is important that college students should develop a serious, scientific, open-minded and respectful attitude towards all normal aspects of sex and reproduction and that they should understand their own ethical, social and eugenic responsibility for their sexual actions. In these lines are the great problems for college education.

How may attitude be influenced? Certainly not by one or two or three isolated lectures which deal chiefly with hygiene and physiology of sex. Certainly not by a teacher who has not himself developed a wholesome philosophy concerning the problems of sex. Certainly not by special stress on sexual degradation, illustrated by numerous concrete examples of perversion and the social-sexual evil. Surely these are ways that will not give young people the desired mental attitude. No, the problems of sex must be approached from a quite different point of view. They must be approached gradually and naturally as part of the general order of nature. There must be no touch of the abnormal which may tend to confusion with the normal.

Such desirable results rarely come from a series of studies on a biological basis. The one general method of sex instruction which seems to be universally accepted is that life in general must be used as a pedagogical tool that leads us to understand human life. Hence, biology, the science of life, as a body of facts, not necessarily as a course of study, is indispensable as a foundation for attitude, if we would have our young people come to look upon all normal sexual processes as essentially pure and splendid phases of the great scheme of life.

With regard to individual responsibility for sexual actions, we face the most perplexing problems. Our ancestral history has tended to make us individualistic and selfish in most things, and it is extremely difficult to make the average human being feel personal responsibility toward other individuals. We, therefore, must admit that we have a big task in attempting to teach young people in colleges or elsewhere their own responsibility for control of their sexual instincts which nature has made irrepressible and at the same time subject only to voluntary control. But although a big problem, it is far from hopeless in college education. Present-day courses of biology and sociology and ethics and literature

are making our college students more considerate of their personal relations to society, and especially in the problems of sex. I believe this is on the right pathway and that the colleges can best contribute to sex education by development of the opportunities which these various lines of study afford.

It must be evident from the above that I am very heartily in sympathy with Dr. Exner's proposition that college men and women of this generation must be made intelligent in sex matters, in order to reach the next generation. College men and women tend to be leaders. Effective sex education given to college students is more likely to lead to greater results than if given to any other body of people.

On another important point I heartily agree, namely, that sex education should be made an integral part of the curriculum. I realize that separate instruction has done some splendid work, but I can not believe its results are as valuable and as safe as gradual teaching on sex subjects. If I understand Dr. Exner, sex education should gradually cease to be separate, but should be woven into the general curriculum wherever possible. I heartily agree.

I have heard of no special difficulty in presenting sex information to men and women in colleges. However, it should be remembered by teachers that men have a larger knowledge on which to build. The teacher of women must be much more tactful and make a more gradual approach to sex problems than is necessary when dealing with men.

I have heard recently of some students who seem to have had their mental equilibrium turned topsy-turvey by having their attention centered on sex problems. For every one of such cases where sex lectures are said to have led to nervous disturbance, there are many similar ones that have in no way been influenced by sex instruction.

The other day my attention was called to a certain high school among whose students several cases of illegitimacy had occurred. The school had introduced sex hygiene, and the critical people charged sex education with the immorality of pupils. I have heard of other schools with the same moral problem but with no sex instruction. Hence, it is illogical to charge students' immorality to sex instruction.

MR. FRANK D. WATSON, The New York School of Philanthropy: I think from what Dr. Bigelow has said, you can fully appreciate that the critic of this evening's paper has not an easy task. Nine-tenths of the things said, I have to agree with, not only in the original paper but also in what Dr. Bigelow has said.

There are however certain aspects of the subject which I should like to emphasize as being of special importance. I think we all agree, do we not, that the first great need at the present time is to re-form the college student's attitude toward sex and the sex life in general, in brief that he should cease looking upon the sex impulse as a drag that pulls down character and should begin viewing it as a great uplifting force, an energizing agent whose right expression makes for character.

Now, how best can this be accomplished? I think we must all agree that sex should be treated not as something apart from but in connection with the general curriculum. Such a method first of all dignifies the subject as nothing else can; secondly, it brings the subject before all the students in a way, according to my personal observation, that no single Y. M. C. A. lecture can do. I think we also must agree that if you have a Department of Mental and Physical Hygiene, it is possible to have a closer personal relationship with the students than when you have a lecturer called in from the outside. Several colleges have already introduced such departments where they take men in groups of six or less and often singly and in a brotherly fashion get hold of the students as no lecturer can. After all, nothing counts in sex education like that which Dr. Cabot has called, "the contagion of personality." It is the man who imparts the knowledge that counts more than the detailed fashion in which he may give his message. He must be a red-blooded individual who commands not only the respect of the student body but who knows them on the personal side.

Just another thought which I wish to contribute to this evening's discussion. I could not help but feel, in listening to the paper, that if the home and our elementary school or high schools had done all that it was their duty to do, a great many of the things that have been left, according to Dr. Exner's paper for the college to do, would have already been attended to. Does that mean, however, that there is not something distinctive left that the college can contribute and which is not now given in the