34 THE NA TURE-STUD Y RE VIE W 16:2-Feb„i9i(> 



I. Pedagogic Aspects 



1 — General Considerations 



Responsibility 'for the proper instruction of youth in all 

 matters regarding sexual development and the care of the sex- 

 ual apparatus, together with the great social problem of sexual 

 right living, must in the nature of the case, rest upon the 

 shoulders of the parents. 



However, parents, as a matter of fact, are as a rule not dis- 

 charging this responsibility. Statistics gathered from a number 

 of representative colleges in the middle states show that only 

 one young man in twenty received from his parents any adequate 

 instruction on these subjects before he left home. If such 

 3^oung men, representing such homes, go out into the world un- 

 instructed, to grope their way in the darkness of ignorance, 

 what must be the mental condition of the youth from less thrifty 

 families? 



This condition of widespread ignorance regarding some of 

 the most fundamentally important questions of social life and in- 

 dividual developm'ent came gradually to be understood among 

 educators and professional men and women, and finally a repre- 

 :sentative body of educators, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, and 

 social workers met in New York City four years ago and or- 

 ganized a Society of Social Prophylaxis, whose object, as indi- 

 cated in the name of the Society, was by the dissemination of 

 information to protect the individual and the body social against 

 the dissemination not only of physical disease, which wrecked 

 both, but of those low ideals and vicious customs which make 

 the highest life impossible. 



2 — Segregation 



The most important lesson learned during these years of 

 experience in presenting this subject to all kinds of audiences, 

 is the importance of segregation. P>y this I mean that boy hear- 

 ers should be separated from men hearers. Mothers should be 

 segregated from fathers. Furthermore, mothers and daughters 

 should be addressed in separate audiences. 



The more homogeneous the audience, the more definite and 

 positive can the statements of the speaker be. It is easy to see 

 that in an address to a mixed audience of parents and children, 

 sex problems would have to be discussed in a most general and 

 indefinite way. The circumlocutions would be so veiled and the 



