SEX INSTRUCTION.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1736, 11 February 1921, Page 5

SEX INSTRUCTION.

(Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Last Night.

The Conference School inspectors to-day discussed the question of sex instruction in public schools. The Minister of Education stated that a great deal of evil was caused by neglecting to instruct the young as to the psychiological facts of life. He referred to the large proportion of inmates in mental hospitals through perversion of sex instincts^and ignorance in' early life of sexual laws. He thought parents should teach their own children. He had doubts of the advisability of calling on teachers to carry out this duty. Dr. Wilkins, Chief Medical Officer of Schools, read a paper suggesting that a form of sex instruction should be taught children of different ages up to 9 or 10. Ordinary teachera could do work, but after the age of puberty, there should be a special staff of instruction to deal with the matter. It was necessary that the subject should be earnestly taken up and every effort made to stamp out ventereal disease would be doomed to failure unless sox instruction were given in early life. The (Minister agreed that instruction should begin early. Meanwhile the school doctors would be looked to to provide a great deal of the required instruction.