Maurice A. Bigelow
Published: 2020-03-11
Total Pages: 88
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This is the Annotated version of the original book. This the Summarized version of the original book. This is 505 to 60% summary of the original book consists of 30000 words approximately. The Brief description of the book is written as follows:-Sex-education in its largest sense includes all scientific, ethical, social, and religious instruction and influence which directly and indirectly may help young people prepare to solve for themselves the problems of sex that inevitably come in some form into the life of every normal human individual. Note the carefully guarded phrase "help young people prepare to solve for themselves the problems of sex", for, like education in general, special sex-education cannot possibly do more than help the individual prepare to face the problems of life.Social hygiene in its complete sense means the great general movement for the improvement of the conditions of life in all lines in which there is social ill health or need of social reform, but it is often limited to the sexual aspect of the unfortunate and unfavorable conditions of life, and it has been proposed to adopt the term "social hygiene" as a substitute that avoids the word "sex" in sex-hygiene. Moreover, the influence of sex in human life has extended far beyond the family (that is, that group of individuals who stand related to one another as husband, wife, parents, and children), for it is a careless observer indeed who does not note in our daily life many social and psychical relationships of men and women who have no mutual interests relating to the biological processes of race perpetuation. Still another type of parents who should know the reasons for sex-instruction are those who accept the traditional idea that their daughters must be kept "protected" and "innocent" while their sons are free to sow a large field of "wild oats," concerning which society in general, and such parents in particular, will care little as long as social diseases, bastardy suits, or chronic alcoholism do not result from the dissipations. Since there are so many people who still need the most elementary knowledge concerning the sexual problems that demand educational attack, it is important that there should be local associations which can manage lectures, publications, conferences, and other means of informing the public as to the gravity of the sexual problems of our times, and as to the part which sex-instruction may play in the attempt at finding a solution. It is important to correct the wrong impression which is now widespread, especially among women who have read the more or less sensational statements in certain books and magazines, that the quoted figures on social disease mean that from fifty to ninety percent of all men are immoral from time to time for many years. But while there is something attractive in this larger interpretation of sex-education as looking forward to the highest adaptation of sex and life, I realize that as a practical matter we must first of all work with young people for sexual morality as defined by the accepted code. A young man who has caught a glimpse of the highest interpretation of sex in its relation to human life, in short, a young man to whom all-natural sexual processes are essentially pure and noble and beautiful, is not one who will make grave hygienic mistakes in his own life, and he will not be personally connected with the social evil and its diseases, and he will avoid almost intuitively the physiologic and psychologic mistakes that most often cause matrimonial disaster.