Journal of Social Hygiene, by The American Social Hygiene As

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: Journal of Social Hygiene, by The American Social Hygien

Postby admin » Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:28 am

THE RELATION OF EDUCATION IN SEX TO RACE BETTERMENT
WINFIELD SCOTT HALL, M.D., PH.D.
Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School


By race betterment we mean the increase not only of the physical health and efficiency of the race, but also the psychical solidity and nobility of the race. The first question which one naturally asks in this connection is, "How may this race betterment be accomplished?" In seeking an answer to this question, we turn naturally to the lower animals and ask how they are modified in race development.

Those species of the lower animals that have been most closely associated with man, for example, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the hog, and the dog, have been very greatly modified and very greatly improved in modern times through the influence of factors which are very largely under the control of man. As we classify these factors of race betterment among the lower animals, we find that they naturally fall into two groups, first, environment; second, heredity. These two factors are the universally recognized biological factors of race change. It is through them that all changes in living things have been accomplished as the milleniums of the past have rolled by.

In comparatively recent times man has consciously and designedly modified and controlled both the environment and the heredity of these domestic animals with which he is so closely associated. He has secured for them the finest possible heredity through careful choice of the animals who were to breed the young. He has insured for them the most hygienic possible conditions from the day of the birth of each animal until its complete maturity. It has been kept in clean, comfortable surroundings and provided with wholesome and nourishing food. The result of this care in the domestic animals has been to produce horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs so far superior to those that existed in the days of our grandfathers that they could be classified almost as different species.

Thoughtful men are now everywhere asking if it is possible to accomplish for the human race changes anything like as profound as those already accomplished for the lower animals. If such a change is possible, it is generally agreed that it is possible only through the combined influence of the two universally recognized biological factors -- environment and heredity.

The various conditions of environment are largely comprised in the more familiar popular term, hygiene, while the essential elements in heredity are practically covered by the popular term, eugenics. We must therefore look towards hygiene and eugenics as affording our sole hope for race betterment.

Now, hygiene accomplishes two things. These two things which hygiene accomplishes are in the directions that may be classified as toward the positive on the one hand and toward the negative on the other, or perhaps better, toward the positive on the one hand and away from the negative on the other. In other words, hygiene seeks to accomplish certain things that are agreed to be good and to avoid certain things that are agreed to be bad. It seeks to promote in the individual habits of life whose influence is to steady, to stimulate, and to strengthen both physical and mental powers. On the other hand, hygiene seeks to avoid in the individual habits of life whose influence is to derange, to deplete, and to destroy.

In a similar way eugenics presents a double phase, namely, a positive and a negative. First, it seeks not only to promote the propagation of the fit, but furthermore to advance the efficiency of the fit. Second, it seeks to avoid the propagation of the unfit. Among the domesticated animals, eugenics is accomplished easily by the arbitrary will, guided by judgment and experience, of the owners of these lower animals, so that the mating of these animals is more or less absolutely controlled by the will of the owners. In the human species, no such arbitrary control is possible even if it were admitted to be advantageous. What is true of control of eugenics, is also in a measure true of the control of hygiene. The state and the municipality may arbitrarily quarantine such contagious diseases as scarlet fever, smallpox, etc., as it may arbitrarily refuse marriage license to the seriously diseased and palpably unfit. To such an extent the interference of the state will be generally welcomed, but we must recognize at the start that the influence of that interference at the very best can accomplish but little, important though that little may be, toward general race betterment. It will decrease the percentage of imbecile, insane, criminal, and degenerate, but important as this is, it can hardly be looked upon as accomplishing race betterment; at best it can only stay race degeneration. Race betterment or sexual improvement of the rank and file of the race in physical and mental quality can only be accomplished through positive hygiene and positive eugenics.

But positive hygiene and positive eugenics can be brought about in the human race only through education. Education should lead the youth to adopt a regime of hygiene that would develop in him the highest possible degree of physical and mental efficiency. Education should also lead him to choose as his mate a life partner who possesses similar physical and mental qualities, besides possessing a blemishless heredity, as good as we will assume his own to be.

The study of social conditions reveals the fact that a large majority of those conditions which are inimical to race welfare are the result of ignorance and of distorted mental attitude regarding the sex life. These distorted mental attitudes can be rectified and this deplorable and dense ignorance can be dispelled only by education. Those who have given attention to this problem of education agree with one accord that the distorted mental viewpoint possessed by so large a proportion of the population dates back to early childhood and is to be attributed solely to the fact that parents do not implant in the minds of their children a wholesome and inspiring viewpoint of the great fundamental truths of life.

The first lesson regarding life should be taught by the mother to her questioning child. It is practically a universal custom of childhood to ask the mother how the baby came, or where they got the baby. The thoughtful twentieth century mother accepts the question as indicating the psychological moment to teach her child the first great lesson and to give it a wholesome viewpoint regarding life. So she answers the question of her child truthfully and not, as the mothers of a generation ago did, through evasions and fantastic fictions.

The twentieth century mother recognizes the fact that when her child comes asking this perfectly natural and perfectly fair question she has one of the great opportunities of motherhood, namely, an opportunity to implant in the mind of the child the feeling that motherhood is a sacred relationship and the mother a sacred object. One twentieth century mother answered her child's question in these words: "Baby sister came out of mamma's body. She was formed within mamma's body. She was formed from materials that were drawn out of mamma's blood; and that is the reason why mamma's cheeks are so pale and mamma's hands so thin and white." The little boy's eyes opened wide with wonder. This story told in such a matchlessly simple way was incomparably more wonderful to the child's mind than the stork story would have been and he looked in his wide-eyed wonder from mamma's pale face down to little baby sister, back and forth, trying to comprehend it all. Then he asked the question, "Mamma, was I formed within your body too?" And the mother answered, "Yes, my boy, you were and that is the reason why mamma loves her boy so, because she gave her own life's blood for him." The little boy's wide-open eyes now took on a far-away look and he seemed to be trying to comprehend the great truth of mother sacrifice. Presently, he seemed to catch a glimpse of the truth and his eyes welled full of tears as he turned toward his mother and threw his arms about her neck, saying, "O mamma, mamma, I never loved you so much before."

When the mother in whose experience the above episode had occurred related it to the writer, he asked her what her boy's attitude had been toward motherhood and she replied: "Since the day I told him how baby came and how he had come, he has seemed to look upon motherhood as a sacred relationship." It is the uniform and universal testimony of parents, who have been telling the story of life in this frank, sympathetic, earnest, and serious way to their children in answer to the instinctive questions of childhood, that the children accept these truths as sacred, that they are drawn into a much closer and more confidential relationship to the parents, that they are protected against contamination of the mind by associates of low ideals, and that they are also protected against being misled by older, low-minded associates into deleterious and depleting personal habits.

While, as intimated above, the primary responsibility for this teaching in early childhood must naturally rest upon the mother, a responsibility no less real and serious, though less urgent and immediate, rests also upon the paternal ancestor and the teacher of the young child. The father should reinforce the mother's teaching, and, in the same spirit in which the mother tells the story of life, the father should confirm it whenever the child comes to him seeking confirmation. In no way can the father more positively teach the sacredness of motherhood to his children than by uniformly showing toward the mother the spirit of affection and tender solicitude for her well-being and happiness. Such an attitude speaks, much more loudly and impressively than any words which the father could utter, his personal feeling of the sacredness of motherhood. The children instinctively catch the spirit of the father and it confirms and fixes indelibly the attitude which the mother herself implanted by her story of life.

The teacher of the child, before the child reaches the thirteenth to the fifteenth year, should not be called upon and should not feel a responsibility for imparting to the child these great fundamental truths of life which it is the inherent right of the child to hear from the lips of his parents and which it is the natural privilege of the parents to impart direct to their own offspring. However, the teacher does carry a very definite responsibility and one which may not be evaded. This responsibility comes very naturally with the teacher's relation to the home. When we consider that the school is an extension of the home and the teacher, so to speak, an extension of the parents, or, we might say, a "vicarious parent," it is easy to understand how natural and essential this responsibility is. The teacher is responsible for two very definite things in the education of the young child between his fifth and his fifteenth year. First, the teacher should show the same vigilant watchfulness that a mother shows to protect the child against the deleterious influence of the occasional pupil that is found from time to time in every school, namely, the pupil whose home influence has been weak or bad and whose associations have perhaps been vicious. Such a child is quite likely to be physically precocious and mentally backward and thus be thrown into association with children from one to three years younger than himself. The influence of such a pupil in a school may be most unfortunate and it requires the greatest vigilance and tact on the part of the teacher to protect the children against such an influence. First, then, the teacher must show all vigilance and tact in protecting the children of her school against bad influence. As a rule, this can perhaps be best accomplished through such an administration of school sports and recreations as fully and completely to occupy the minds of the pupils during the hours when they are on the school ground but not in the school room, thus, again, turning the mind towards the positive and away from the negative.

Second, the teacher should accept every opportunity which presents itself to implant in the mind of the child, or we may perhaps better say to confirm in the mind of the child the same wholesome attitude regarding the sacredness of life and the sanctity of home relationships which she herself holds in her own mind and which she may assume has been implanted by the parents in the minds of the children. Many an opportunity will be offered the teacher for dropping a word in harmony with this mental attitude in the course of the nature study work. Even In the kindergarten, it is a very common thing for the teacher to have a little family of baby kittens or baby rabbits or baby birds for the children to take care of and to love. While the thoroughly equipped and tactful teacher, if she understands the psychology of youth, will not make opportunities repeatedly to impress "morals" about maternal and filial relationships, she may, not Infrequently, drop some remark that leaves an indelible impression upon the child regarding these relationships. The social ethics of the robin's family, hemmed in a nest that may be watched from the schoolroom window, may set forth in compelling conviction the whole law and gospel of the social ethics of human society. While, in this teaching, we must take care not to attribute to the robins a degree of consciousness and discernment commensurate with that of the human species, the most conservative biologist must admit that the same kind of sentiment which prompts parental care on the part of the human mother, prompts it on the part of the robin mother; that maternal altruism in the human species, while possessing a greater element of emotion and a smaller element of the automatic, is, from a psychological standpoint, the natural and necessary outgrowth in man of the same thing which prompts the sacrifice and love of the robin mother. The nature teaching, therefore, in the public school affords the teacher an opportunity to make an atmosphere about life that impresses the child with the sacredness of all life and with the special sacredness of human life and of human parenthood.

We have now set forth in sufficient detail the character if not the whole content of the teaching regarding the sex life that the child should have up to the threshold of adolescence, which may be taken as about thirteen years for the girl and about fifteen for the boy. Just before the crossing of the threshold from girlhood into womanhood, or from boyhood into manhood, the first lesson regarding the individual sex life should be taught to the girl by her mother and to the boy by his father. This first lesson is the lesson of womanhood or of manhood respectively.

I. WOMANHOOD OR MANHOOD

The parent should seek a favorable opportunity for a heart to heart talk with the youth who is approaching the threshold of adulthood and should explain what it means to grow into womanhood or manhood as the case may be. The mother, for example, explains to her daughter the phenomena of the physical and mental development of the girl into the woman and pictures womanhood in such vivid and glowing terms that it fills the whole soul of the girl with a consuming desire to grow into the highest type of womanhood. Then the mother explains that this wonderful development of the physical, mental, and spiritual qualities of womanhood is dominated and controlled by a wonderful and magical substance that is prepared in the ovaries of the girl, absorbed into her blood, and distributed throughout the body from the threshold of womanhood, throughout middle life, and until the beginning of old age. The natural influence and result of this story of womanhood, told to the girl by the mother in the same spirit in which she, years before, told her the story of motherhood, is to impress upon the mind of the girl so strongly that it is never effaced the feeling which amounts to a dominant conviction that her person is sacred to her womanhood.

This teaching fortifies the girl absolutely against the malevolent influences of low-minded, older girls with whom she might, by some ill chance, be thrown into association in the school.

In a similar way, the father should tell his twelve-year-old boy the story of manhood and arouse in the youth a consuming desire to grow into the highest type of manhood. As a part of this lesson, he should reveal to his boy the new-found truth that the development of manly qualities is caused and controlled in body and mind through the influence of an internal secretion prepared by the testacles and absorbed into the blood and distributed throughout the body. This substance, carried into the muscles with the blood, causes these muscles to grow big and hard; carried into the brain and spinal cord, lights the fires of manhood in the young man's brain, and these fires shine through his eyes and illuminate his face. When the boy realizes that a substance made in the testacles holds the secret of manhood, he is fortified against any evil influences to which he may be subjected by his associates. A boy thus instructed is absolutely protected against being misled by low-minded associates into destructive and depleting habits. He learns that great lesson of life: his person is sacred to his manhood.

II. PERIODICITY

At the time that the youth crosses the threshold from youth into womanhood or manhood, respectively, the parents should impart the second lesson concerning the sex life. This second lesson consists of an explanation of the periodicity of the sex life upon which the youth is entering. It is little short of a tragedy in the case of many a girl to enter upon womanhood with no explanation of the experiences to which she is introduced incident to this new phase of life. Many questions crowd into her mind, demanding answer. When no answers are forthcoming, we can not wonder that her heart is filled with rebellion at life and its unexplained mysteries. Society, therefore, demands that mothers answer frankly the questions that come into the minds of their daughters at this period of life. The mother will therefore explain to her daughter adequately the periodicity of the sex life and will further explain that this experience to which the girl is introduced is her Creator's preparation of her for future motherhood. This explanation will control the girls' mental attitude toward womanhood. Instead of rebelling against the experiences of womanhood, she exults in its wonders and its possibilities. In a similar way, the father explains frankly to his boy the periodicity in his life, and, in thus explaining, forestalls the worry and dispels the fear that would surely come but for the explanation.

III. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Early in the adolescent period, say the fifteenth or sixteenth year for the girl and the sixteenth or seventeenth year for the young man, there should be some very definite instruction on the part of parents regarding social relationships. This lesson might very properly be given when fifteen-year-old Margaret and seventeen-year-old John are seated with mother and father about the family hearthstone. It will be a very wholesome experience for John to hear his mother instructing Margaret regarding the social relationships, because he is just beginning to enter with zest into society.

The mother will explain to Margaret that in all her social relationships with her young gentlemen friends, she should have a jolly good time, but should permit no familiarities. The mother may well explain to the daughter somewhat in detail the reasons why the parents, from their broader experience in life, make these rules for their children, and explain that it is not to debar the children from the enjoyment of any legitimate pleasure, that these rules are given, but rather to insure the greatest ultimate joy in life.

As John hears this instruction from his mother to his sister, he very naturally thinks to himself, "My girl friend, Jennie, must have received just such instruction from her mother, so it's up to me, if I am to be the chivalrous young man that I shall not be ashamed of, to treat my girl friend Jennie, in the way that I would have the other fellow treat my sister."

The parents explain to their children that such common familiarities as putting the arm about a girl's waist or kissing her -- familiarities which many young people look upon in a frivolous way and carry off with a jest -- are unfortunate and dangerous familiarities because, harmless and innocent though they may be in themselves, they break down the delicate self-respecting reserve of the girl and in many cases, by insidious advances, lead the way to other familiarities which eventually compromise the dignity of the girl's womanhood, perhaps even compromise her character. The young people should have it very clearly set forth that the only absolute safety for the girl is not to permit the beginning of familiarity. Let the young people be taught that the embrace is society's sacred symbol of protection and that the kiss is society's sacred symbol of affection. Once that lesson is clearly impressed, we may trust the young people to guard even the threshold of familiarity.

Young people of this age are living over again the impulses and the instincts of chivalry. Instinctively, they acquire a code of honor inherited from days of chivalry: the honor of woman and a square deal among men. Every knight stood ready to drop in his tracks, shedding his blood or laying down his life to enforce this code of honor. So, the youth of today can be very easily inspired to adopt this code of honor and to be ready to fight for it. Most of his instruction in this lesson number three should be positive in its character and should seek to inspire in the youth the spirit of chivalry and of altruism.

The negative side of social relationships should call the attention of the young people to certain unfortunate things in human society that must be avoided. Departure from the high ethical standard set forth above is uniformly punished. This natural retribution may take various forms, but as the laws of nature are immutable, so the punishment that Mother Nature metes out for the one who breaks her law follows absolutely. One of the forms is found in those contagious diseases which are disseminated largely through illicit social relationships. Enough should be told every young person by mother and father so that the daughter and the son will realize that the breaking of nature's laws is sure to bring a punishment in some form. This method of instruction puts the matter in its proper perspective and links it up not only with the physical and intellectual life, but also with the moral life, thus being an important element not only in the formation of character but in the solidification and fortification of character.

IV. EUGENICS

The relation of education in sex to eugenics is a most important one. As already intimated above, in the introductory paragraphs, state laws guarding the licensure to marriage may help some in eugenics, but, at most, little can be accomplished through state intervention. Most that may be hoped for in race betterment through eugenics must be accomplished through education. This education should begin in the later teens, in the case of both the young woman and the young man, and, like the other lessons in life, should emphasize, first of all and most strongly, the positive side, though not omitting the negative side.

A. Positive eugenics

That young woman who has come to the estate of ripe young womanhood at twenty-one to twenty-three years of age, having learned all the lessons set forth above from the lips of a loving, sympathetic, clear-visioned mother, having in many a heart-to-heart talk with mother received full and adequate answers to the hundred-and-one questions that crowd into the girl's mind, is in a mental attitude toward mother easily to be led and guided as to her choice of a future life partner. We may also assume that such a young woman sees in her father and brothers men who help her to acquire a high ideal of manhood. Mother and daughter will discuss manhood and the elements of ideal, perfect manhood -- perfect physically, mentally, and morally. A girl who has acquired such a high ideal of manhood can be trusted not to fall in love with and marry a man who falls far short of this ideal. Of course, we must recognize that "Love is blind," which is simply another way of saying that a young woman may be led to ignore many a shortcoming in the man who showers attentions upon her and protests undying love and volubly promises to reform. The days, however, of the ill-advised mating of a perfect woman with a grossly imperfect man, with the hope of overcoming his imperfections, are rapidly passing. Her instruction in the elements of manhood enables her to analyze, and she instinctively stops to analyze, before she permits her heart to go out to a man.

In a similar way, the young man should be taught to recognize ideal womanhood and, having made himself worthy of a perfect woman, to look for one for a wife.

B. Negative eugenics

The preparation of young people for a wise choice of a life partner is not complete until they know some of the things assiduously to be avoided in this choice of a life partner. Every young person should know that there are certain serious impairments, physical or mental, that may be transmitted from parent to child, and that there are other such impairments that positively will be thus transmitted. Among such impairments must be noted insanity, feeble-mindedness, degeneracy, and criminality, especially when such serious impairments are noted to occur in successive generations, several individuals in each generation. Even though the individual in question may seem to be quite normal, if he has two or three impaired brothers and if one of his parents, and perhaps one or two of their brothers and sisters, .and his grandparents, with great uncles and aunts, have the same impairment sent down two or three generations and perhaps more, then the individual in question would make a dangerous life partner, because without any reasonable doubt the germ-plasm of the individual has been impaired, and his children would be very likely and some of them certain to show the impairment in some degree. If now, there is a taint on the side of the mother, as well as on the side of the father, it is hardly likely that one of their children would escape being marked in some way with one or the other or both of these family taints.

Another serious impairment that must not be omitted is venereal infection or hereditary venereal taint. Every person choosing a life partner should know about the possibility of these above-mentioned taints and should avoid them as he would avoid poison.

Some have asked how this information will influence a young person in the choice of a life partner, and will it not destroy sentimentality and old-time love? It is to be hoped that instruction in eugenics will destroy that sentimentalism which leads a woman deliberately to marry a man who is absolutely unworthy of her and can only bring disease, degradation, and death, and that maudlin so-called love which is blind to imperfections that are so glaring that they might be seen through opaque lenses. What instruction in eugenics will accomplish is to establish psychic inhibition at the threshold of love, so that on meeting a young person of the opposite sex, however attractive and agreeable that person may be, the one in question does not at once go out in unquestioning, blind love-at-first-sight that was so common in the days of our fathers, but will experience a psychic inhibition, in other words, there will be an instinctive holding back or hesitation on the threshold of love to ask if all within and beyond is favorable. Is the admired one in good health and does he (or she) possess the qualities of ideal manhood (or womanhood) and has he (or she) a parentage free from hereditary taints. These questions answered affirmatively, the questioner steps boldly across the threshold and enters into an unreserved love.

SUMMARY

Race betterment depends upon the two biological factors: heredity and environment. One of these is as important as the other; and each is all important.

Both of these factors may be guided, assisted, and controlled by two forces: (1) legal control and (2) education. Important as is legal control of marriage licensure, that control can hardly accomplish more than to forbid marriage to the grossly unfit. But, stopping the breeding of the unfit can never lift the race; at best it can only arrest race decadence.

Race betterment can only be accomplished through education. While this education culminates in a course of instruction in eugenics during the mid-adolescent period, the foundation of this education must be laid in childhood and early youth.

The object of this teaching is: (1) To give a wholesome viewpoint of the great sacred truths of life. (2) To give high ideals toward which to strive. This teaching is home work and for parents. But as the school is an extension of the home, and the teacher an extension of the parent, so the school must cooperate in giving wholesome viewpoints and high ideals.

This instruction should cover the following subjects: Motherhood; womanhood (or manhood); periodicity; social relationships; eugenics.
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