FACING THE FACTS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 31 August 1928, Page 5

FACING THE FACTS

SEX EDUCATION EXPERIENCE IN SYDNEY SCHOOLS (From "The PojW Representative.) • •• • ' SYDNEY, 23ra August. The sex crimes which have shocked the Sydney community recently have served to raise afresh the question whether parents should not fearlessly, but in (i wholesome and simple way, teach their, children the facts of life, in order to fortify them against tho .critical period of adolescence. Not a few agree with tho Principal Medical Officer of tho Education Department (Dr. Harvey Suttpn), when he says that "All the specious lies and evadinga so regularly practised by parents aro merely heaping up difficulties for tho later adolescent stage, when any approach on the subject by the parent may arouse suspicion, and not confidence." The question, it is felt, is whether adolescents should be taught something of the hygiene of sex by their parents or teachers, or whether they should find out about these thuigs through mischievous and polluted sources outside. "For many," says Dr. Harvey Button, "the whole reproductive function is given a filthy, indecent aspect, and is treated as a subject for obscenity, with the result that the most wonderful aspect of existence, the perpetuation of the species by the creation of new beings, is dragged through the mire." . The fact has been revealed, on the question of sex education, that instruction given to girls of ■12 years to 13 years in the Sydney high schools by a woman medical officer, on tho hygiene of their own sex, has not resulted m over-excitement, or what is termed emotional upset, but has, on the contrary, been well received by the girls. It is the growing girl, apparently, that has to be more carefully guarded 111 these matters than the boy. It is pointed out, for example, that the girl is outpacing the boy in tho race to maturity, and that she is prepared for reproductive existence years before tho male. Ine girl of 14, according to Dr. Harvey; Sutton, equals the boy of 16; the girl of 15, the boy, of 18; the woman of 18, the man • of: 21,iand the woman of 21, the man of 25. ■ Within a few short, years the girl has become the woman. She has changed from the chrysalis _ to the butterfly. She has cast off childish things, and regards herself as a woman of the world. Dr. Harvey Sutton, m a fearless analysis of the position, says that boys, for the lack of teaching through proper channels,. often , dograde sex by obscenities years before their parents have thought it- tone delicately to approach the Bubject to thorn. The other side of tho picture, of .course, is whether the average parent, is competent, even in broad, simple outline, to offer his or her child a biological study of the reproductive functions, although bodies such as the Racial HyUieno Centre aro doing quito a lot to enlighten the community on these mat-1 tors- ____^• I