FACING THE FACTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 69

FACING THE FACTS.

SEX EDUCATION. EXPERIENCE IN SYDNEY SCHOOIUg. (From Our Own Correspondent.! SYDNEY, August 23. The sex crimes which have shocked the Sydney community recently have served to raise afresh the question whether parents should not fearlessly, but in a wholesome and simple way teach their children the facts of life, in order to fortify them against the critical period of adolescence. Not a few agree with the principal medical officer of the Education Department, Dr Harvey Sutton, when he says “ All the specious lies and evadings so regularly practised by parents are merely heaping up difficulties for the 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 things through mischievious and polluted sources outside. “ For many,” says Dr Harvey Sutton, “ 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 the hygiene of their own sex, has not resulted in 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 in these matters than the boy. It is pointed out, for example, that the girl is outpacing the boy in the race to maturity, and that she is prepared for reproductive existence years before the male. The 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; and 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, in a fearless analysis of the position, says that boys, for the lack of teaching through proper channels, often degrade sex by obscenities years before their parents have thought it time to approach the subject to ‘.hem. The other side of the picture, of course, io 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 Hygiene Centre are doing quite a lot to enlighten the community on these matters.