Rejection of early sex education in N.Z.

Press, 29 June 1983, Page 9

Rejection of early sex education in N.Z.

By

JACQUELINE STEINCAMP

Sex education in New Zealand primary schools has a history of meetings that discussed the subject, and then declared, “There is no place for sex education in primary schools,” according to the historian, Colin McGeorge. A senior lecturer in education at the University of Canterbury, he is co-author of “Church, State, and New Zealand Education.” Mr McGeorge surveyed early attempts at sex education for primary children at the recent annual meeting of the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Family Planning Association. “From 1912 — the earliest mention I could find — this was the over-riding sentiment of teachers. “It has been repeated down through the years, and now in April 1983 the Minister of Education states categorically that there will be no sex education in primary schools while he is Minister. “Indeed, it would be funny if it were not so sad,” Mr McGeorge said. The earliest New Zealand advocate of sex education for little children appears to have been a Dr Syme of Christchurch. In 1900 in an interview in the “Lyttelton Times,” Dr Syme was urging parents to inform themselves of the facts of life, and pass them on to their children As medical officer to the Burnham Industrial School,

Dr Syme had a stern regimen for those “degenerates who indulge in unnatural vice or self-abuse.” Meat rations were cut to the bone, and cold baths were compulsory. Dr Syme recommeded vasectomy for obstinate cases. “The effect of this operation is to cause a gradual shrinking and atrophy of the testicles, and to remove sexual desire. “It has been performed also for the cure of epilepsy and insanity resulting from masturbation, with the happiest results,” he wrote. Along with the conspiracy of silence, .a climate for anxiety was created. This provided a ready market for swindlers offering patent medicines and terrifying phamplets describing many perfectly natural conditions as malignant. If the purchaser stopped ordering an elixir, letters would arrive professing alarm, and regretting the need to inform parents, school principals, or local clergymen for the customer’s own welfare. In 1907 one Christchurch lad paid out £lB to a quack. His situation was discovered when he sold a bicycle and camera to raise more money. “The simplest way to el-

iminate these swindlers, would have been to inform young people of the facts of development and reproduction,” said Mr McGeorge. “Instead, legislation was passed to suppress both the swindlers and information about sex and contraception.” These were the Offensive Publications Act, 1892, and the Quackery Prevention Act, 1908. It was not until 1912, however, that teachers were to discuss sex education in any depth. The subject was forced on them by the activites of a Mr R. W. H. Bligh, an itinerant lecturer for the White Cross League. The league, an Anglican organisation which preached personal purity to boys and young men, operated throughout most of the white British Empire, and in the United States. Mr Bligh, who travelled round New Zealand lecturing to school boys wherever he could find a welcome, stressed the perils of puberty and the dire effects of self-abuse. He lectured to boys at Fendalton, Addington, Sydenham, Rakaia, and at the Burnham Industrial School, where he had personal interviews, including one with John A. Lee. In spite of the high morality of Mr Bligh’s message, not all teachers were impressed. Some even felt he did more harm than good. One of these was the president of the New Zealand Educational Institute. He devoted much of his 1912 presidential address to blasting Mr Bligh, and calling for the Department of Education to hire two lecturers (both Christian,) one male, one female, to tour the country talking to senior primary pupils. Sex education was thus high on the agenda of the 1912 Commission on Education, which considered the present alternatives. These ranged from nothing, to talks from a woman doctor to girls at the Wanganui Girls’ High, and to pamphlets for boys

at the Southland Boys’ High School. One school principal argued that confirmation classes were the most appropriate venues for sex education. The subject threw the hearings into confusion. What was to be done? The most general view was that something should be done, but everyone had different ideas about what it should be. Accordingly the commission reported: “There should be advice to boys and girls sometime before they leave school, preferably by parents ... but as parents are often neglectful, there should be lectures by teachers ... but better still, every head teacher should, where practicable, deal personally and individually with every pupil.” The 1913 annual meeting of the New Zealand Educational Institute was to endorse the commission’s conclusion that there should be sex education in primary schools, but they stopped short after the words “preferably by parents.” “What sort of sex education did those children get?” asked Mr McGeorge. A specimen lesson prepared by George Home, M.D. and printed in the 1912 commission’s report, showed that the aim should be to impart the barest minimum of information, wrap up a few facts in a great deal of moral injunction, and get it over with as fast as possible. The author, Eileen Soper, wrote in her autobiography, “The Green Years,” of how a friend’s mother, realising her complete confusion about the facts of life, lent her a copy of the popular American booklet “What a Young Girl Should Know.” “This straightening out of the tangle of lies and halftruths gathered from primary school was a relieving experience, and I was deeply grateful to May and her dear enlightened parents.” “A major argument for sex education is the way that many adults talk about sex education. “Public discussion usually takes us back two steps rather than advancing,” Mr McGeorge concluded.