4.  Since it is not ignorance of what is right, but rather the will to do the right, that is usually responsible for sexual delinquency among adults, the program of public education must include more effective moral education in all grades of all schools; every subject, properly taught, is a means of cultivating will power, of strengthening character; but the school curriculum is now made to yield but a small part of its possibilities.

5.  The appeal must be made to self-respect and to chivalry; especially through history and literature the idea of sex must be spiritualized; the right education of the emotions is fundamental.[68]

6.  Through the study of heredity and eugenics, the social responsibility of the individual may be made to serve as a higher incentive for right conduct than the fear of disease.

7.  If there is one truth concerning sex education that needs emphasis above all others, it is that all plans for meeting the social emergency must strengthen the control of moral and spiritual law over sex impulses; otherwise sex education may be antagonistic not only to physical health, but as well to the highest development of personality and to the progressive evolution of human society.

FOOTNOTES: 

[61] The best expression of the consensus of opinion of those who should know most about the subject is the Report of the Special Committee on the Matter and Methods of Sex Education issued by the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, New York, December, 1912.

[62] Sex Education, by Ira S. Wile, M.S., M.D. (New York, 1912), aims to assist parents to banish the difficulties and to suggest a course of instruction.  It is a brief and wholly admirable treatise.

[63] Progress, the second annual report of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society, gives some account of the most extensive public education that has been conducted in this country.

[64] The Exhibit of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society has been seen by over 50,000 people, at a total cost of less than two cents for each person.

[65] Especially valuable are the two volumes by Abraham Flexner, written for the Bureau of Social Hygiene.  See List of References.

[66] See American Youth, New York, April, 1913 ("Sex Education Number").  An article by George W. Hinckley tells of the ideal way in which he gives individual instruction to his boys at Good Will Farm, Hinckley, Maine.

[67] “Sex-instruction as a Phase of Social Education,” in Religious Education, 1913, by Maurice A. Bigelow, is one of the best articles on this subject.

[68] F.W.  Foerster, Marriage and the Sex Problem. No book on this subject has reached a higher plane of idealism.  At the same time it is scientifically sound.

LIST OF REFERENCES

CHAPTERS I, II