SEX AND THE SCHOOLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 64, 16 March 1944, Page 2

SEX AND THE SCHOOLS

VIEWS OF CHURCH COUNCIL

Primary responsibility for the sex instruction of children rests upon parents, states the Auckland InterChurch Council's sub-committee report, which follows on a discussion of sex instruction in schools in the report of the Government committee on the post-primary curriculum.

Parents should call in competent assistance if they feel unequal to the task, the report adds. Where the schools are concerned it is highly undesirable that sex instruction should be given indiscriminately to children in class, without regard to individual differences in physical and emotional development. Referring to the present moral situation, the committee remarks that a morally sound community should have wise conventions governing relations between the sexes. The need is to devise new conventions to meet the old dangers in a changed world. In this, the schools have a part to play, by giving wise guidance in social behaviour, especially to girls. The committee is of the opinion that instruction in the physiology of sex is not in itself a solution of the problem, and that the only adequate form of sex instruction is that which aims at strengthening modesty and self-control in the light of the Christian ideal of chastity.