ime when the child needed the most energy for
physical growth and the most relief from mental strain, and had then set
out to plan a course of study which would wreck his health, we should
have built a school system which gave him the comparatively easy work of
the elementary grades until he was fourteen, and then, at the most
critical period of his life, sent him into a new system of schools to
study new, abstract subjects.

What is it that our children must have before they can acquire anything
else? Health! We cry the word aloud, emphasizing and exhorting--nothing
without health! Yet, despite our protest, at a period of rapid physical
growth, at the time of severe spiritual trial, there yawns the high
school--grim for boys, ghastly for girls--with its ever-recurring
demand: "Work, study; study, work."

Considering the child's physical welfare, the high school is placed at
exactly the point (fourteen to eighteen years) where it is best
calculated to destroy the delicate balance of sanity, rendering its
victims unable to stand the burden and heat of life's later day.

We cannot escape the fact that children have bodies. The first duty of
the schools, therefore, is to recognize the existence of these bodies by
giving them due attention, particularly at the crucial periods of
physical growth. Therefore every school must provide as much physical
training as is necessary to insure normal body growth at each particular
age.

Then there are certain rules of health--"hygiene," they are
called--which should be taught to every child. Since bodies do not stay
normal if they are abused every child should have right ideas of body
care.

Most important of all, the schools must instruct children in sex hygiene
because the growth of sex consciousness is one of the most significant
of the changes which occur in the life of a child.

"But must sex hygiene be taught in the school?" you will ask.

Undoubtedly it must. If it were a choice between sex instruction in the
home or in the school, there would be no hesitation about delegating it
to the home; but since most homes neglect the discussion of sex matters,
leaving the children to gain their knowledge of sex from unreliable
sources on the streets, the choice lies between the perversion of sex as
it is taught on the streets, and the science of sex as it should be
taught in the schools.

III Play as a Means to Growth

Children's minds grow as well as their bodies--grow in r