o destructive diseases which are chargeable to
sexual promiscuity or immorality.
[Sidenote: Order of importance of aims.]
For emphasis, let me briefly summarize these aims of sex-education: (1)
Serious, scientific, and respectful attitude of mind on sex questions;
(2) personal sex-hygiene; (3) social and ethical and eugenic
responsibility for sex actions; (4) relation of immorality and social
diseases. I have deliberately, placed these educational aims in this
order because it is the order of greatest permanent importance in the
sex-education movement; it represents the greatest value to the largest
number of individuals who may learn the scientific truth; and it is the
order most natural, most logical, and most effective in pedagogical
practice with young people.
[Sidenote: Relation of aims to problems of sex.]
Sex-education organized with regard to these four aims will touch
definitely all the eight problems of sex that have been discussed in
preceding lectures. The first aim will directly affect the problem of
vulgarity and indirectly touch those stated under the third aim. The
second aim is obviously directed to the problem of personal health as
it may be influenced by the sexual processes of one individual
independent of others. Of course, there is also the personal aspect of
social diseases, but it is clearer to consider both personal and social
aspects of these diseases as a unit in the fourth aim. The third aim is
based on five of the eight great problems which involve individual
responsibility for the social evil, for illegitimacy, for sexual
immorality, for matrimonial harmony, and for eugenics. The social
aspects of the venereal diseases obviously involve personal
responsibility of the individual in relation to society as well as a
personal hygienic problem. Thus, six of the eight great sex problems
are essentially social and only those relating to personal hygiene and
individual attitude are so distinctly personal as to have only an
indirect relation to other individuals, as might be true in case of
unharmonious marriage of individuals who are vulgar minded or who have
been injured by unhygienic personal habits. Finally, the fourth aim
provides for teaching the _essential_ facts that may help individuals
protect themselves directly, and society indirectly, against the
diseases that awakened the world to the need of sex-education.
Let us turn now to analyze the aims of sex-education and consider how
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