SEX INSTRUCTION

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2238, 12 February 1921, Page 2

SEX INSTRUCTION

Wellington, Nov. 11. The Conference of School Inspectors to-day discussed the questiV. 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 physiological facts df 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 dutv.

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 9or 10. Ordinary teachers could do the work, but after the age of puberty there should be a special staff of instructors to deal with the matter. It was necessary that the subject should be earnestly taken up, and every effort made to stamp out venereal disease would be doomed to failure unless sex 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.