ex lines and so
prepare boys and girls to meet the teen period is almost completely to
meet the teen problem.

Social and economic changes have moved this generation a full hundred
years ahead of our fathers. The change, however, has a moral menace in
it, for the slow but sure ways of the old-fashioned home with its
genuinely moral atmosphere have nearly slipped us. Today boys and girls
are herded together by the compulsion of the times and moral ideas are
in danger of being warped and twisted. Everything about us today is more
complex than formerly, and the more complex things become the more we
herd together. Mass life is common and growing--in education, in the
schools and in play life, in the big public playgrounds. Religious
activity, in spite of the group tendency toward the small group, is
still in the mass--Christian Endeavor, Sunday school groupings, etc.
With the growing assumption of week-day activities on the part of the
church, the moral peril increases.

To offset this increasing social danger sex instruction is an insistent
necessity. Boys and girls must be taught to see themselves as members
of society with all that that implies. To do so means a knowledge of
self and sex and their functions and responsibilities. The sources and
processes of life must be intelligently understood and thus respected.
Ignorance of life does not beget purity, respect and honor. A boy's
regard for a girl cannot proceed from lack of knowledge, although this
lack may be termed innocence. A girl's love for the best for self and
others is impossible unless she has knowledge tinged with the awe of
God's purposes. Too often have our boys and girls been merely innocent,
such innocence causing their fall. The tree of knowledge sometimes
demands a high price for its fruit. To safeguard lives unblighted, the
purity and processes of life's mystery must be imparted through
instruction to our growing youth.

This can best be done by the parents--father or mother--for since
children (boys or girls) ripen and come to puberty, individually and
independently, the parent is God's choice for this task. To group boys
and girls together for this instruction is terribly wrong, as the group
must contain those whose need for information varies. To talk on these
matters in mixed groups of boys and girls is to incite wrong impulses
and is criminal. The parent is God's instructor in these things--a
father to the son and a mother to the daughter. Any