Problems in the Organization of Health and Human Relations (Sex Education) in the Public Schools

Abstract

Educators generally agree that they must deal with the school child as a unified whole and that it is impossible to separate the mental physical and other phases of his life and growth. Health and Human Relations (Family Life Education) or social hygiene is a vital part of the education of every student but too few schools in the country have recognized this fact and since the advent of Sputnik there have been suggestions that this subject is one of the frills of education. While most students are interested in their studies they are likewise asking questions relating to social hygiene or family-life education. Such questions are to be expected when one realizes that the majority of young people receive little or no sex information from their parents because few students feel that they can discuss such problems with their parents. Among educators who favor sex education in high school there is divergence of opinion as to what it is or what it should be. At one extreme is the urgent recommendation that the subject be restricted to an exposition by the biology teachers of the facts about human reproduction. At the other extreme is the enthusiastic identification of sex education with the efforts to make boys and girls good by frightening them with the horrors of the venereal diseases and the stigma of unwanted pregnancies. Actually neither extreme is acceptable. We should conceive of social hygiene as a phase of character education directed toward the whole child. (excerpt)