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Colleges. In the Journal of Social Hygiene this month, Dr. Exner reports on The Status of Sex Education in the Colleges, on the basis of replies from 111 institutions of 300 questioned. In large institutions, including most of the State universities, social hygiene is given the least attention. In smaller colleges better courses are found. Types of instruction vary from a mere skirting of venereal disease or some pointers on the care of children to a comprehensive study of marital relations. The oldtime lecture which, says Dr. Exner, was either a gruesome "smut-talk" during which many a student would faint, or "sentimental moralizing, exaggeration and pseudo-science . . . by itinerant speakers of the evangelistic variety . . ." has happily gone out of fashion. Nevertheless, he concludes, though there has been conspicuous progress in the last 20 years, the proportion of institutions giving an adequate sexual background for marital and social life is still small.
Elementary Schools. A pioneer educator in sex was Professor Harry Beal Torrey of the University of Oregon who in 1920 helped introduce biological instruction in grade schools in The Dalles, Ashland and Newberg, Ore. Prime features, repeatedly demonstrated since then, were that young children found innocent fun in watching earthworms, frogs, spiders undergo life processes. Parents often became alarmed if they found their children observing animals whose activities resembled too closely those of man. Some mothers even thought it "unladylike" for their small daughters to handle caterpillars. Another observation: Small moppets were seriously, naïvely interested in the reproductions of plants and of oviparous (egg-laying) animals; but when viviparous (birth-giving) forms appeared there were snickers and knowing looks from sophisticated youngsters. To correct this, teachers worked patiently until the subject had lost glamor, until children were unconcerned by such words as anus, sperm, ovary, excretion, etc.
First college to give credit for a teacher's course in sex education was the University of Cincinnati. Best teacher-training under State auspices is in Virginia. In Alabama, Washington, in Minneapolis, and in Winnetka, Ill., where Superintendent Beatty of Bronxville first experimented with sex-in-nature courses, the movement was advanced. The A. S. H. A. is chary of making extensive surveys: it must be. There still are many parents throughout the land who, if they hear that Sex threatens their offspring, will rise in anger.