The education of youth as it exists has a great gap wherever the subjects
of reproduction and sex are concerned. Children are taught at home many
things about every other part of their lives, but usually nothing about
this; at school they learn the anatomy and physiology of bones and
muscles, of sense-organs, and nervous system, of glands and alimentary
canal, of respiration and circulation; but a sudden silence falls just
before sex is reached. We study everything about life except its origin,
and in ignoring that we lose a most fascinating and beautiful field of
inquiry, an essential part of knowledge, and a vital element in moral
intelligence.[30]

The aims of sex education may be stated in the main as follows:--

(1) The first aim is individual prudence. Every normal human being must
undergo crucial tests and solve vital problems in his own sex life. The
most beautiful successes of life and its most conspicuous failures are
both exceedingly frequent in the realm of sex. The conditions of the
sexual life are sufficiently alike in all normal cases so that the
experience of the race is valuable to the individual in meeting his own
problems. Each child as he passes onward through youth to maturity is
treading a road new to him, not lacking in danger and pitfalls, nor
without opportunities for great reward. Education must give him all the
available advance information concerning the road he is to travel.

(2) The second aim is general intelligence. Sex is a universal element in
all living beings, with the exception of the very lowest; it pervades the
life of the spirit as well as the life of the body. No man, therefore, can
be intelligent concerning things in general without a clear, definite and
accurate knowledge of the fundamental facts of sex. One of the strongest
new visions concerning sex is the marvelous way in it ramifies into all
fields of thought and action. Not a few of the most eminent workers in
modern science incline to consider all aspects of human life, including
even religion itself, as emanations or processes from the sex basis. Such
in particular are G. Stanley Hall in America and Freud in Germany. Without
going to such extremes we may still recognize the fact that in all sorts
of physical and psychic problems in morals, religion, and sociology, sex
plays an important part and must be understood if we are to grasp the
situation and its meaning.[31]

(3) The third aim is social enlightenment. The hu