EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 286, 30 August 1935, Page 19

EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE

New Developments in Social Hygiene

The question of education for marriage was discussed.at the Seventh Imperial Social Hygiene Congress, organised by the British Social Hygiene Council.

Dr. I. Feldman, a member of the marriage sub-committee of the British Social Hygiene Council, speaking on “Methods of Handling Pre- and PostMarriage Problems,’’ said that they had become convinced that monogamous marriage as an institution was the central pivot of our civilisation. Science was not enough. There svas an emotional side to sex which, if ignored or run away from, would definitely discount all that the scientists could oiler in an attempt to solve the sex problem. Unless an ethical standpoint was adopted, based among most people on the narrower approach of an organised religion, unless ethics and religion were definitely and openly asserted, they would not make great headway. They must start with the education of the young citizen, and there must be at the beginning of life a healthy outlook upon sex and all that it stood for both in the individual and j,society. Their experience taught them that the best scientific medium and the best practical educational medium for such an education was biology.

Marriage as applied to “companionate’’ and “trial” marriage was not marriage in the sense in which the British Social Hygiene Council understood > it. In education for marriage they emphasised that, to the extent; that society encouraged and facilitated the adoption of the married state by its citizens, it was fulfilling its ■ highest functions. If every man and woman by the time they • reached mature age was fitted for monogamous marriage It could be said that the function of education had been truly carried out.