The Treatment of Sex in Education.
by J. H. Badley.
Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 737-742
Part I.
Canon Lyttleton, Headmaster of Hailybury, in the International Journal of Ethics for July, 1899. The paper has been reprinted (with some alterations) in a volume, Training of the Young in Laws of Sex, published by Longmans, Green and Co, which should be read by every parent.
The conclusions expressed in the following pages are the outcome of the experience of a dozen years of school-work, and of much thought about a problem which must present itself for practical solution to everyone, parent or teacher, who has the care of children and faces the responsibilities of their upbringing. Many parents recognize, to the full, the need of facing the problem themselves; some devolve the entire responsibility in the matter on to the schools to which their children are sent; others appeal to the schoolmaster, as being, presumably, an expert on the subject, for help and guidance. But the schoolmaster too often cannot or will not help. Either he takes the line that there is nothing to be done:
"It all works out right at the end. We have been through the thing ourselves and have come out none the worse. Some of course go to the bad, but so they would in any case. The worst thing you can do is to make a fuss about it."
Or, if he is of less sanguine temperament, the sense of his own impotence is apt to make him take the despairing view that nothing can be done. And schools must bear their burden in silence. Or perhaps he is afraid to speak from the not unnatural fear that if he calls attention to the dangers of school-life, the public will conclude that in his own school there must be a special prevalence of the evil he seeks to combat. For these reasons, and other of more general application to be touched on presently, schoolmasters are drawn into the general conspiracy of silence that hangs over the whole question, preferring to ignore the evil of whose existence they are aware, until it is forced upon their notice.
One Headmaster has, however, recently broken the silence with a weighty plea for definite instruction of children in sex-matters, and there are other signs that a healthier feeling about the whole matter is beginning to gain ground. A large number of parents and teachers alike are no longer content with any policy of ignoring evils or possibilities of harm, and are endeavouring, not so much to check the disease when it has become established, as to trace it to its causes and guard against the risks of infection. And I should add here that the risk of infection is not confined to one set of surroundings, or to one age, and is not to be guarded against, for example, simply by keeping a child from school, either altogether, or until a certain age is reached. You can keep a child from school, but you cannot keep him (let me make plain, once for all, that in these remarks no distinction, unless expressly stated, of boy and girl is intended by the pronoun) from a wide range of companionship, or from every possibility of harm.
The matter, therefore, is not one that concerns schools only; nor, I may say in passing, does it affect, in anything like the degree often assumed, the question as between the day-school and the boarding-school. It is one that concerns us all, school and home alike. How widely it does so, and how far-reaching are the results of our action or inaction in the matter, I cannot here attempt to trace. My aim is much more limited and solely practical. I shall confine myself to that part of the subject which concerns the school and the previous home-life; discussing only, first, whether it is wise to explain to children the facts of sex, or not; and secondly, if it should be done, then in what manner and when; and further, what part of this delicate task properly belongs to the school, and what to the parents. My hope is to find a means to bring about a more complete co-operation between the two great influences in a child's life. I write in the first place as a parent, for other parents; and in the second as a schoolmaster who has for years tried to find in his own work a practical answer to these questions, and who has learnt of what immense moment, for harm and for good, is the apathy of parents or their aid.
First, then, for the general question; shall we or shall we not ignore in our teaching the facts of sex? Shall we leave the child to come by the knowledge gradually and (as we suppose) in due time, or shall we rather endeavour to ensure that, at each stage of growth, his knowledge is neither false nor obtained through unclean channels? The course ordinarily followed is, as we all know, to let the matter alone; and weighty arguments in favour of this course are not hard to find. In the first place there is the feeling that the simplicity of childhood has no need of such knowledge, and that, until there is more experience of life and more power of self-control, it can neither be given intelligibly nor without serious risk of harm.
We want our children to remain simple and innocent in mind, and we are apt to suppose that this can be secured by withholding from them the knowledge that we do not wish them to have. And to this is added a natural reluctance to speak of the matter at all. As the result of our own upbringing and of the manner in which any allusion to the facts of sex is usually made and received, we seemed forced to the conclusion that this is a side of life of which, in the apostle's words, it is a shame even to speak; and even to our children we are unable to overcome the feeling of reserve imposed upon us by habit and by association of the subject with a smoke-room levity of treatment. And so, partly from conviction and partly from an habitual restraint in the presence of childhood, the scale drops on the side of inertia, and we answer our children's early questions by evasions or by some form of repression: "Oh, you mustn't talk about that,"--until the questions cease, and we try to persuade ourselves that the curiosity that prompted them has ceased also.
In this way, the tradition of silence and mystery is built up on the child's mind about one set of facts, which are thus invested with all the attraction of a forbidden subject; and he soon finds that any enlightenment of his natural curiosity, or satisfaction of the un-natural curiosity too often engendered by this means, can only be obtained from those for whom he has little respect, and in ways which he feels to be unworthy; and so the subject begins from the first to be degraded in his thoughts and surrounded with a sense of shame and concealment and wrong-doing--the exact opposite of the simplicity and innocence which we sought by our silence to preserve. There are, no doubt, children in whom this natural curiosity is slight and easily satisfied or restrained; and there are some, no doubt, who reach adolescence without wishing to know more than is forced upon their notice. But there are others, the majority as I believe, who are not like this. And this need not be put down to any special depravity either on their own part or on that of their associates. Curiosity, the desire for knowledge, is a normal and healthy condition of childhood. It may be distracted or checked for a time, or at least driven beneath the surface; but in most children it is there and must be taken into account. Nor can we assume, because it is never directed to this subject by us, that a child's curiosity is never directed to it at all. Nature does not enter into our conspiracy of silence. Children cannot help seeing things that arouse their curiosity in this direction.
Differences of sex are self-evident to them, and demand explanation as much as any other fact of nature. And, with all our care, how can we shut out these things from their hearing? Do we suppose that, however indifferent he may seem to it, "grown-up" talk is arousing no questions in the child's busy brain, even if the questions are not asked out loud? And even if we can avoid in our own talk before children all allusion to sex (the supposition, if we come to think of it, is absurd), can we answer for the talk of servants and others with whom they must associate? None can tell what a chance word in talk or reading will arrest a child's attention and set him wondering. It is surely plain, if we think the matter out, that complete ignorance, even if it were desirable, is impossible. Instead, therefore, of assuming that children need know nothing of the facts of sex, and devoting all our efforts to the maintenance of a state of ignorance, we had far better recognize from the first that some of the facts cannot fail to enter a child's cognizance, and to awaken the desire to understand them and to think them into a place in the world of consciousness in which he lives.
The question, then, if we take this view, changes to this: shall we, when he questions us, or when occasions arise that bring any of these facts to his notice, either put him off with equivocations and no-answers, or take the line: "These are things you cannot understand yet; wait till you are older"? Or, on the other hand, shall we try to explain the facts to him as simply as we can, and endeavour to maintain the simplicity and innocence of mind that we desire, not by any partial ignorance, but by making all that he can know of these facts as clear and natural to him as any other part of his knowledge?
The first course here suggested may, I hope, be dismissed without discussion. If we are not fully convinced that it is never wise to attempt to deceive children, we are not, in my opinion, fit to educate them at all. The second, however,--the postponement of an answer to the child's questions,--presents itself in a very different light, and at first sight seems the right and reasonable thing to do. And would be so, no doubt, if we could dismiss the subject from the child's mind as easily as we can debar it from his talk--in our presence, at least. But there lies the crucial difficulty of the whole question. I am wholly opposed to those who believe that any natural impulse can be checked by mere repression. I hold that we can only rightly deal with such an impulse by satisfying it in some way that is felt to be true and worthy, and that we can only control it by teaching self-control.
To some, it may seem absurd to talk in this connection of satisfying the curiosity of childhood, and of teaching it self-control. But my point is that, satisfied, it will be in some way or other, good or bad; and if self-control, even in the smallest particular, is associated with sex-knowledge from the first, not only is it freed, then and later, from the attraction of something forbidden, but the best foundation is laid for later mastery of the actual sex-impulses. And, in practice, this is surely not impossible. If a child is made to feel that he can bring every question to his parents and that he will be answered truly and with sympathy, there need, one would think, at no time be the loss of confidence that parents often feel so keenly, and that is, in many cases, occasioned by the answer, however kindly put: "wait till you are older." It is always best, I believe, to answer a child's questions as fully as possible; as far, I mean, as he can understand,--how far that is, his further questions will show. And if, at the same time, he is made to feel that, on some subjects, he should bring his questions to his parents only, and that while they are always ready to talk with him, they do not wish him to talk of these things with others, the simplicity and naturalness of the knowledge (the point above all to aim at) can surely be maintained without fear of misuse, and the beginnings of self-control established. I would urge, then, the following stages of treatment of the subject.
(1) If a child, boy or girl, will talk freely with both parents, so much the better; but it is in the natural order of things the mother who has most of a child's confidence, as their association is most constant and most intimate. It rests therefore, usually, with the mother to satisfy the child's wish for knowledge, and to lead him to a simple and natural apprehension, true so far as it goes, of the main facts of birth and the purpose of the difference of sex in all living things. Some mothers shrink from the task, not so much from any of the motives above considered, as from distrust of their own qualification, owing to the feeling that a great deal of scientific knowledge is necessary in order to present the subject truly. But it is not a wide range of knowledge, nor a scientific exactitude that is needed to answer a child's questionings here any more than in relation to the stars or flowers or any of his constantly changing interests. There will be a place for that later.
What is needed now is what every mother can give: a simple statement of the simplest facts in the order in which they present themselves to his notice or reflection, invested with the naturalness of all knowledge so acquired. Of these facts, motherhood is sure to be the first, and it is the easiest for the child to grasp. The slow growth of the new life within the mother's body, the leaving it at birth, the pain that the mother bears for her child, the closeness of the bond of love caused by all this, and by her giving the newborn baby its food from her own body, these are the things of deepest interest to every child. And though he cannot understand fatherhood so easily, he can at least know that, in this story of birth, the father's love has a share,--and so this and all the facts of sex, as he comes, then or later, to learn them, may be associated for always with the child's deepest feelings, his love and respect for mother and father, and an instinctive reverence for motherhood.
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Nov. 2023