modesty is quite a sufficient protection"!

To me the wonderful thing is the earnestness with which a boy sets
about the task of cleansing his life when once he has been made to
realise the real character of the thoughts and acts with which he has
been playing. Boys, as I find them, rarely err in this matter, or in
any other, from moral perversity, but merely from ignorance and
thoughtlessness. Severe rebukes and punishments are rarely either just
or useful. The disposition which obliges the teacher to use them in
the last resort, and the rebellion against authority which is said to
follow puberty, arise almost invariably from injudicious training in
the home or at school. Boys who have received a fair home training,
and who find themselves in a healthy atmosphere at school, are almost
invariably delightful to deal with; and even those who have been less
fortunate in their early surroundings adapt themselves in most cases
to the standards which a healthy public opinion in the school demands.

It may be thought that the mere reticence of adults about reproduction
and the reproductive organs would impress the child's mind with the
idea that it is unclean to play with his private parts or to talk
about their functions with his companions. This is a psychological
error. For some years past adults have avoided any allusion to the
subject of excretion, and the child assumes that _public_ attention to
bodily needs and _public_ reference to these needs are alike
indelicate. He does not, however, conclude that excretion in private
is an indelicate act, nor does any sense of delicacy oblige him to
maintain, with regard to companions of his own sex and age, the
reticence which has become habitual to him in his relations with
adults. Why should the child think it "dirty" to fondle and excite his
private parts or to talk about them with his boy friends? The
knowledge which makes us feel as we do is as yet hidden from him.

The same thing is certainly true of conversation about the facts of
reproduction when those who converse are uncorrupted. Another element,
however, at once appears when these facts are divulged by a corrupt
boy, because his manner is irresistibly suggestive of uncleanness as
well as of secrecy. Similarly when self-abuse is fallen into
spontaneously by a boy who is otherwise clean, no sense of indecency
attaches itself to the act. When, however, it is taught by an unclean
boy, there is a feeling of defilement fro