Sex Education For Your Children

"Ignorance can lead to all mistakes, to all misfortunes."

This statement was made in one of the latest health education brochures published in France. The initiation into reproduction has been of great concern to moralists and educators of all times.

Sex education itself has different meanings, according to those to whom it is addressed, namely: for some, it is the education of cleanliness, for others, it is the education of the senses and the feeling or only preparation for married life.

Sex education cannot be exclusively a prophylactic education and even more so a religiously inspired education. Montaigne said, "It is not a soul, it is not a body that is learned, it is a man." We must not learn without each other but together, both soul and body. Exasperating materialism. A moral of the laws of nature.

Between these extremes, there is room for healthy justice and this should only consider sex education as one of the essential branches of knowledge. It cannot be admitted only that man breathes through his lungs, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and passes in silence the function of reproduction which equals in importance all the others together.

 Hypocritical modesty

Can we call educators those who deal only with the guidance in life, leaving aside the knowledge of the perpetuation of the species? Until now, education has been content to easily go over certain details of reproduction, just as in some anatomy drawings it has erased the genital attributes of each sex.

In doing so, he gave way to ignorance, imagination, vice, and erotic speculation. The story of the stork has become a joke that even children do not believe. Instead of this hypocritical modesty, would it not be time to proceed with good training of the youth, showing them how things are with all the propriety that this high purpose of the human species deserves?

When the great French scientist Alfred Fournier, to whom the whole world owes a great deal for his studies on syphilis, founded the "Society for Health and Moral Prophylaxis," he took up the task of training young people, because sex education is the strongest defense. of venereal diseases. We know that this work of education is hampered by some insurmountable obstacles.

If it were decided tomorrow that sex education should be taught as a compulsory subject in high school, there would be protests from all sides in the name of "morality", which is more outraged by what is happening today. No doubt this work would require highly skilled people to say simple things simply and unobtrusively that excites the imagination.

With tact and patience

The purpose of sex education is to make the child understand that beings are born, live, and die, and that this wonderful cycle could not exist without the function of reproduction. The idea of ​​continuing the species drives away the horror of death from the mind, letting it be understood that the being that fulfills its reproductive function does not die, but continues through its children forever and ever.

Sex education is closely linked to prophylactic and moral education. She opens the eyes of the youth to the dangers of venereal diseases, gives the young man a sense of responsibility for his actions, and puts the girl in front of the possible consequences of a moment of oblivion. As I said before, this task is particularly difficult; it takes a lot of tact and a lot of psychological care not to be frightened but to make things understand as they are.

Well-known Dr. Monteuil-Straus managed to do this in a book entitled: "Tell me, please, mother!", In which the initiation is made progressively from the description of the birth of butterflies, fish, cats, and puppies. The care of the hen laying her eggs, of the cat nursing her kittens, naturally leads the child who looks at this book to understand that the birth of his sibling is a natural thing. In presenting the truth to children, an essential principle of education is observed, that is, not to lie.

At the same time, a normal curiosity will be satisfied, because the sexual instinct that sometimes awakens even before the age of 10 is normal and healthy. Then the child who will know how much effort and danger his mother gave his life, will love her more than if he imagined that he came in the beak of a stork, or that he found him in a cabbage bought from the market.

But, it will be said, the child who will be taught natural science lessons and who will understand the role of the stamen and pistil of flowers, of fish eggs, will perhaps ask those who teach him questions that will be difficult to answer. But even here, with a little delicacy, it will be possible to satisfy the child's curiosity.

Awakening curiosity

Who cares about initiation into the mysteries of sexuality? Of course to the father and mother, if they can do it. Otherwise teachers, doctors. Opinions are divided on the age at which the child can be initiated. A survey was conducted among young people in Switzerland. It was found that from the age of 5 they start to know something and at the age of 10 they know almost everything; in 83% of cases, the initiation was done by friends. Of these, 83% were poorly initiated.

In America, a survey of 1,000 high school students found that 63% had learned something before the age of 11 and that being fully initiated had fallen victim to vicious and obscene practices. The conclusion of these surveys would be that sex education should begin with the arousal of curiosity and before the information told by his more experienced friends enters his head. Being a supporter of sex education simply means being a supporter of education.

Opposition to sex education is the policy of the ostrich, which hides its head in the sand, believing that its backside is not visible. To let things go their way, that is, to allow their children's education to be done by their peers, is to expose them to all sorts of unhealthy ideas and to ruin the illusions of youth so many times. As a documentation of the above, I will give the opinion of Dr. Toulouse, president of the French Society of Sexology: "I am a supporter of organized sex education of youth. It must be done in families by parents; the mother to teach her daughters and the father the boys; but before starting to read the essential notions of this branch of hygiene.

At school, sexual hygiene must be taught as a chapter of general hygiene by the doctor. All means must be used to direct the sexual instinct and discipline it. We have to have children, but more importantly, we have the best children we can. "

Not clandestine initiations!

In modern society we can decide whether or not our children should receive a sex education; they will no doubt receive it. The only condition left is to give educational value and a beneficial meaning to this education. In this area, silence is certainly far more dangerous than the simple truth told with good knowledge and respect.

The mystery that surrounds the function of reproduction, only creates wonder, worries, and curiosity, maintaining in the minds of children a real sexual obsession. If the child does not ask himself, it is good to give him the useful knowledge little by little, because we must remove the clandestine, fanciful, and vicious initiations, which darken the imagination and pervert the souls. Sex education aims to prepare and help adolescents for life.

Because the vast majority of parents cannot do this initiation without their training and time, the role of the pedagogue must return to the school.