292 BIOLOGIC TEACHING OF SEX 



States Government and Michigan State Board of Health Bul- 

 letins, is used as text. The third course, Special Physiology for 

 Women, or the physiology of sex and development, given in 

 the Biological Department, is the one which I have been asked 

 to describe you in some detail. In addition to these regular 

 courses, mention should be made of the fact that the Kinder- 

 garten Department of our Training School is much alive to the 

 needs of the child in the home, and through its mothers' meet- 

 ings and house to house visitations, it is doing some most im- 

 portant educational work in instructing the mothers in the gen- 

 eral care of their children. 



This course, "Special Physiology for Women," offered by 

 the Michigan State Normal College, is concerned, first, with the 

 study of physiology and hygiene of sex; second, with the devel- 

 opment of the human being from the ovarian egg to advanced 

 adolescence; third, with the needs and methods of instructing 

 children in some of the more fundamental biologic laws of life , 

 and, fourth since the whole matter of sex is by its very nature 

 a social one with such sociological questions as courtship, mar- 

 riage, eugenics, heredity and prostitution. It will be seen that 

 the course develops into the science of sociology. It is grounded 

 in the science of biology. Such instruction, indeed, can hardly 

 be given safely or sanely unless it has a broad scientific basis 

 and a practical sociological application; its most worthy char- 

 acteristic should be its reasonableness, its naturalness, and this 

 can be true only when the facts of sex are left in their own 

 biologic setting and given a real human significance. Nearly 

 any detached fact is hideous and the public has already viewed 

 the facts of sex for too long a time in their separate and unre- 

 lated conditions. This course is an attempt to show relation- 

 ships and to keep proportions. 



We, therefore, begin with the primary principles of biology, 

 and this introductory work has to occupy a considerable part 

 of the entire course, since our students come to us with almost 

 no high school work in zoology and rarely any in human physi- 

 ology. It is a lamentable condition in our State, but in living 

 up to, or down to, the university admission requirements most 

 of the high schools offer no courses in physiology or hygiene. 

 Only about 12 per cent, of the students in the Special Physiology 

 classes have had any work in advanced physiology or zoology, 

 most of which is taken after entering college. We must then 

 treat of the nature of protoplasm, the cell theory, the maturation 

 and fertilization of germ cells, and other similar topics in an 

 elementary and careful manner. 



