BIBLIOGRAPHY ON BOYS’ CRUSADE

High School Student Christian Movement Series: 

Bulletin No. 1.  The Local Organization (.05).

Bulletin No. 2.  Typical Constitution (.05).

Bulletin No. 3.  The Inner Circle (.05).

International Secondary Division Leaflet, No. 5 (Free).

XV

SEX EDUCATION FOR BOYS AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL[10]

There can be no adequate comprehension of the physical side of boyhood if the sex element be left out.  In fact, we have discovered for ourselves that this is the very element that constitutes the real problem of boyhood; for until the idea of sex enters into the boy’s consciousness we are only dealing with an infant.  It is the gift and power of self-reproduction that changes the selfish, individual existence into the larger, altruistic life.  It is this that compels gangs and team-work and the instinctive desire to negate self in service for others.  It is this that forms the basis for the tribal or community desire; and on it, understood or not, is built all further achievement.  The real value of a brave to his tribe begins with the support of his squaw, and the modern boy gets his importance among us, when, because of bodily function, he awakens to the consciousness of the meaning of the home.  This comes gradually at puberty or adolescence with the knowledge of the sex purpose.  And it is the quality of this knowledge, its purity and fear and regard, that makes the lad a worthy member of the larger whole, or a peril.

Knowing this as we do, is it not a matter of some wonder that we have never really made any systematic effort to instruct the boy concerning his wonderful power?  Very few fathers give their sons any guidance along this line, although they do so quite freely on every other subject.  Of course, it is a sacred, delicate subject from which we naturally shrink, but it is overmodesty to allow a lad to fall into the abuse of his manhood, either alone or in twos, when a wise word, spoken in time, would save the smirch on two lives or more.  In fact, we are beginning really to understand that it is just as imperative for us to teach a boy how to live his life with the utmost happiness as to show him how to procure the wherewithal to feed his body.  For this reason it is being advocated today that the boy should be given explicit instruction as to the care of the organs of reproduction and detailed information as to the functions of these organs, and many are doing this.

Our boys today are eating freely of “the knowledge of good and evil,” and they are not as innocent as we could wish them to be.  They are not ignorant of the processes of life because we have said nothing concerning them, but their knowledge is partial and faulty and clouded with misinformation.