THE EVIL OP "SEX TEACHING."

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 26, Issue 4, 1 April 1936, Page 6

THE EVIL OP "SEX TEACHING."

DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST'S GRAVE WARNING In the course of his Liidwig Mond Lecture, delivered to the University of Manchester, Professor J. Graham Kerr, F.R.S., spoke very candidly of the craze for "sex teaching." It was one of the misfortunes of the advancement of science, he said, that while it brought with it untold benefit to mankind, such benefit was accompanied by a certain amount of ill. The educationalist proclaimed the need of every young person being taught the details of his bodily structure and function, to learn about what were called the "facts of life." What was apt to be achieved was the encouragement of that interest m one's self and one's symptoms which was a real danger to mental health and stability. One of the most dangerous aspects of this subject was that relating to sex. Modesty and reticence m regard to matters of sex were to-day apt to be scoffed at as mere Victorian prudery. They were something far more: they were an integral factor m sex itself, and fashion when it led away from them led on the way to race suicide. One of the strident calls of the day was for sex education m schools. Apart from undesirable possibilities to which this opened the way, the idea was itself, m his opinion, thoroughly unsound. During the years immediately succeeding puberty, the aim of education should be to do nothing to accentuate the natural interest m sex; but, on the contrary, to take the greatest pains to

keep the mind occupied with other interests, so as to allow- of sex development proceeding m its normal regular fashion.

In the evil work, a conspicuous part was played by the literature of birth control. Books on this subject had an immense sale, and it did not seem to be generally realised that through them there was being disseminated throughout modern civilised communities a deadly poison, the effects of which must necessarily tend towards the extinction of some of the great races of the world, races which had played a pre-eminent part m the development of modern civilisation—(From the Church Times.)