YOUTH AND THE RACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 130, 2 June 1923, Page 14

YOUTH AND THE RACE.

ROYAL COMMISSION ON SEX INSTRUCTION. WHITEHALL AGAINST FORMAL TEACHING. (Br Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, April 20. "Youth and the Race" is the title oi the fourth report of the National Birthrate Commission, appointed some years ago by the National Council of Public Morals, nnd it deals in the main with the old and difficult question: Should children be told? The commission, presided over by the Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Russell Wakefield) and composed of more than a score of leading doctors, .ministers, and school workers, heard thirty-one expert witnesses upon the following, among other, points:—Should instruction in regard to sex be given to young people? At what age should it be begun? What should be its content? By what method should it be imparted? What is the agency that it is practicable to employ? Only one of the witnesses examined, Mr. A. H. Evans, a schoolmaster, formerly of Winchester College, expressed himself as unreservedly opposed to such instruction. Other headmasters and headmistresses, however, fully recogmiscd that the moral peril existed, and needed to be guarded against. The commission came to the conclusion that the earlier some sort of instruction begins the better. It ought not to be put off till a child is thirteen or fourteen.

All the witnesses insisted that questions asked by children about their own origin should be answered as fully and frankly ao the capacity of the child allowed." While reticence must be observed as to sex relations, the old legends must not be repeated. "I put the age or nine," said Dr. Lyttelton, "as being the time when boys should be perfectly able to understand the facts of maternity. A mother told mc once how she first told her boy about that, and the only effect was that he flung his arms around her neck and loved her better after, knowing what it meant then, although he had never known it before."

As to tbe kind of instruction that should be given, there was not the same •general agreement among those who gave evidence.

The committee Found itself in general agreement with the more reticent policy, "while recognising that a longer experience and a wider inquiry are necessary for a confident judgment a 6 to what may or may not he imparted."

An important passage in the Commissioners' findings runs as follows:—"In the discussions of the Commissions the insufficiency of knowledge to secure virtue was recognised. Hence the essential importance that the instruction should be given in a proper atmosphere of personal relation between teacher and taught, by one who has the confidence of, and so can influence, those being instructed. While the instruction should not 'be emotional in the sense of exciting emotion, it can only be fully effective where there is affection.

Whether parents or teachers should give the instruction was found to vary so much with circumstances that no definite rule could be laid down. The committee, however, recommended in view of the necessity of competent instruction in the* schools of the country, teachers should be adequately trained to impart it; and that the matter should receive the serious consideration of the Board of Education. The report was presented by a deputation yesterday to the Board of Education and the Ministry of Health. Lord Eustace Percy, Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education, made it clear, in replying, that the board was not in favour of sex instruction in schools. The board, he said, was satisfied that the detailed teaching of sex hygiene was not appropriate in the public elementary schools; still less was any direct reference to the cause and prevention of venereal disease. "Objections," he added, "to mass instruction in sex matters, always serious, are specially formidable in the case of elementary schools which include pupils of both sexes, of different social grades, and various religious beliefs. In such circumstances a general course of instruction applied to all pupils of a given age would not merely give offence to many parents, but must also, do positive harm by ignoring the different home surroundings in which the children have been brought up. "Every social class.is exposed to its own peculiar dangers, and each tends, 1 think, to develop its own protection against them—its own social standard and conventions, its own unwritten code of thought and speech. "It would be fatally easy for members of different social grades for whom life is focussed at a slightly different range to damage this natural protection witliout replacing it. "The giving of individual advice, on the other hand, is a duty and r_ privilege which may**-at any "time fall to the teacher, and he or she must be prepared by thought and training to give such advice wisely." . The deputation included the Bishop of Peterborough. Sir James Ma reliant, Principal A. E. Garvie, Rabbi Professor H Gollanez, Dr. Horton, Dr. C. W. Saleeby, and Mrs. John Clay.