REPRODUCTION AND SEX 589 



all wish to leave well alone. But it is not working well. Moreover, 

 as the vocation of the teacher is increasingly recognised as one of 

 the most honourable, we shall get teachers more able to undertake 

 difficult tasks. 



(b) It has been said that it is a terrible responsibility to break 

 brutally on an adolescent's reserve of mind. But this is a question- 

 begging objection, for there is no occasion for psychic violence, and 

 there is no brutaUty in some good sound biology. There are many 

 methods of indirect approach — some of the subtlest of which are 

 beginning to be opened up by the suggestions of Freud. There is 

 nothing brutal in the suggestion that there should be a carefully 

 prepared chapter on the physiology of sex and reproduction inserted 

 even in the school textbooks of physiology, some of which con- 

 tinue to be published on the grotesque assumption that man has 

 no reproductive system. 



(c) Doubt is also expressed whether the education authorities 

 would be justified, even if willing, in attempting intrusion into 

 what ought to be a parental responsibility. But the parents usually 

 do nothing in the way of discharging this particular responsibility, 

 and a parental revolution, because the school was trying to do what 

 they ought to do themselves, might be as wholesome as it would be 

 hypocritical. A wiser answer is probably that the mode of sex- 

 instruction chosen should be one that is not too far ahead of con- 

 temporary public sentiment. 



It is easy to argue oneself into a laissez-faire policy until one comes 

 again face to face with the actual facts — of unwholesome ways of 

 looking at things, of morbid curiosity, of bad habits, of filthy- 

 mindedness, of thoughtless immorahty, of disease, of habitual vice. 

 These are ever dragging evolution in the mud, and the eugenic 

 ideal of positive advance cannot hope to find wide reahsation unless 

 we try also to lessen the kakogenic handicaps. 



It must be noted that unless we supply wholesome instruction, 

 the mind of the youth tends to be discoloured by unwholesome 

 information gathered surreptitiously. 



It is probable that every large school includes a small percentage 

 of abnormal pupils, who infect others with their own unfortunate 

 perversions. 



If nothing "straight" is ever said by anyone, it is difficult to deny 

 the justice of the sufferer's reproach — which is not confined to 

 Brieux's plays — "But you never told me anything about that". 



It should be noted, too, that the sex-instincts in man are general 

 rather than sharply defined. That is to say, we have, in regard to 

 sex functions, very little instinctive knowledge of what various 

 phenomena mean, or of what is normal, or of what is to be carefully 

 avoided. A boy or a girl may slide into bad habits without being 

 well aware of what is happening. 



