Teaching Social Hygiene Through Literature I. SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE BY LUCY S. CURTISS English Department, Bridgeport (Connecticut) High School II. OPPORTUNITIES FOR SEX EDUCATION IN ENGLISH CLASSES BY LOUISE B. THOMPSON English Department, Woodward High School, Cincinnati, Ohio THE AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION Incorporated 370 SEVENTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY Keprinted from Social Hygiene, Vol. VI, Nos. 2 and 3, pp. 263-272, 39/1-399, April and July, 19-20 Copyright 19-20 The American Social Hygiene Association, Inc. 370 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y. Publication No. 309 / FOREWORD Most teachers of literature fully appreciate the opportunity that their subject offers for the development of character. No other academic branch, with the possible exception of civics and sociology, furnishes so rich a field for the inculcation of high standards of conduct and high ideals of life. Does every teacher realize, however, that it is not only her opportunity but her duty to extend her field of teaching to include social hygiene? The--purpose off-the articles irj—this pamphlet is to impress this truth upon every teacher of English. She, perhaps more than any other person outside the child’s immediate family, can emphasize the results of wrong ways of living, and by personal discussion with her boys and girls, can bring home the importance of right living, not only to themselves and to the community, but to their ‘ ‘ afterselves. ’ 9 The part of the English teacher in social hygiene is not that of the biologist, but rather that of the artist—to paint the picture of sex in the colors of beauty. By holding up “the good, the true, and the beautiful,” without concealing the other side, they are lessening the opportunities for the “evil” to become entrenched in the lives of our young people. In this “movement for a better world in the next generation,” the American Social Hygiene Association stands ready to lend a helping hand by providing literature, recommending and evaluating books, and generally by making available the services of its staff of experts in all phases of the field. Plans are now being formulated for evolving material and methods for use in this type of instruction. . > \ SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE LUCY S. CUKTISS English Department, Bridgeport (Connecticut) High School When the fourfold plan of the government for sex instruction was first outlined to me I was at once impressed with the practical impor¬ tance of the instruction which might be given from the standpoint of health by the physical instructors, from the standpoint of scien¬ tific knowledge through the biology department, and from the stand¬ point of social ethics in the civics classes; but I thought that in approaching the English department also the leaders were going rather far afield. It seemed, in the first place, that the influence of that department would be too indirect to be of special value, and in the second place that all earnest English teachers were already endeavoring through their teaching to inculcate higher ideals and consequently higher standards of life among their pupils. But further thought has convinced me of two things: first, that we English teachers need to be awakened to the challenge of this prob¬ lem of social evil and our responsibility toward it; and secondly, that after all, the indirect method of teaching is scarcely less important than the direct, and each supplements the other. I say first that we need to be awakened to the importance of this problem. It may be that the inspired prophet speaks things the significance and far-reach¬ ing effect of which he only half understands; but I doubt whether the teacher, however inspired, can ever produce upon his class a lasting impression of any truth unless he has first been gripped by that truth. It is our business to know the conditions of the society about us, to understand the physical development of our pupils, and to realize the influences for good and for evil to which they are sub¬ jected. Unless we have this background of sympathetic understand¬ ing and of positive conviction, our influence will not count for much in this movement for a purer world in the next generation. But we need to realize, in the second place, the effectiveness of the indirect method of combating the social evils. The most dangerous 6 SOCIAL HYGIENE forms of propaganda have been those insidious, subtle forms which influence the thought of many people without being recognized as propaganda at all. There is a propaganda* as subtle, as elusive, which is undermining the character of our boys and girls and poison¬ ing social life; and to us English teachers more than to any other group except librarians is given the privilege of combating this bane¬ ful influence. I refer, of course, to the books which they read, and which are richly supplemented by productions in the movies and on the stage. There is the fortunate pupil who has early formed a taste for good reading. He presents no problem; we have only to build upon a good foundation and our task is pleasant. At the other extreme is the pupil who never reads anything, except perhaps the sporting page of the newspaper. I was shocked the first time I discovered a boy who, after much reflection, could not remember ever having read a book, and could recall reading only one magazine; but I have ceased to be surprised even by this situation. What have that boy’s home influences probably been? Who have been his associates? What the standards of life that he has seen? He needs an awakening of the imagination, a glimpse of other types of society than his own, an appreciation of the great ideals of literature. Between these two extremes, however, come the great mass of our pupils. They have read more or less extensively, entirely at random. The boys have been lucky. They have found tales of adventure, marvelous and startling it may be, perhaps with all kinds of rascality parading under the guise of heroism; but at least they have sedulously avoided the mushy, sentimental stuff over which the girls have pored with delight. And what an array it is! Do you English teachers know the books your girls are reading? To peruse them fairly frequently, I believe, is profitable occupation for us. Let us read them sanely, realizing that the girl in her teens passes over much which seems to us significant; let us read them sympathetically, remembering that we once reverenced the heroines of E. P. Roe and wept over the misfortunes of Ellen in The Wide, Wide World; but let us read them thoughtfully, that we may under¬ stand the mental atmosphere in which these girls are moving. Let me give you a few specimens of the books which our own librarians have selected for me as having the widest circulation SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 7 among girls of high school age. There is Harold Bell Wright’s That Printer of Udell’s. The hero, a common printer who has known all of the bitterness and much of the evil of life, falls in love at first sight with the beautiful daughter of a prominent and wealthy man. Feeling himself unworthy of her, he laves in silence. Time goes on and the girl leaves home. She is followed and nearly trapped by a rich young villain. She escapes from his clutches and wanders, helpless and forlorn, in a strange city. Finally she is befriended by a beau¬ tiful and apparently kind woman who introduces her to a life of shame. She is rescued by the hero at the critical moment, and eventually marries him, her fall having leveled the barriers that had previously existed between them. One of the most vivid pictures in the novel is this den of vice, furnished in luxury, blazing with light, filled with brilliantly dressed men and women bent on licentious pleasure. What impression would this scene leave upon the mind of the girl? Certainly the whole situation is an unwholesome satis¬ faction of her normal craving for romance. Or take The Judgment of Eve , by May Sinclair, a little volume published by Harper’s and so attractively bound in a violet-be¬ sprinkled cover, with violet-margined leaves, that any girl would be attracted to it. The heroine is the richest, the handsomest, and the best-dressed girl in the village. She could have had her pick of all available suitors while “the other young ladies were happy enough if they could get her leavings”—a young girl who “had exhausted Queningford; it had no more to give her.” This promising young heroine is debating over two suitors, having finally eliminated all others. Her problem would appeal to many a young girl who is ask¬ ing herself in all seriousness, as Aggie asks herself, “How can you tell when you really love a man?” She takes the one with stylish clothes, a polished manner, a smattering of poetry and art, the one with such unbounded sympathy that “there was nothing in the soul of Aggie that Mr. Gatty had not found out and understood.” He proves himself to be inefficient, unable to make a good living, and equally unable to restrain his nonpoetical physical instincts. Six children come in as many years. Her health, her beauty, and her longings for art all disappear. Doctors’ warnings come to both husband and wife, but they are unheeded, and she dies at last as she 8 SOCIAL HYGIENE gives birth to her eighth child, worn ont by the long struggle, and leaving her husband bowed down with a remorse that came too late. One of Robert W. Chambers’ latest books is The Girl Philippa. The story opens in a cabaret in a French town in which Philippa is serving, ostensibly as cashier, really as spy for the proprietor who is playing a double game, being in the employ of both the French and the German governments. While dancing and flirting with an American artist, twice her age, who is evidently not unfamiliar with the inside of cabarets, she falls desperately in love with him. He also, upon his first sight of her, has discovered that underneath the paint and powder “there is a soul as clean as a flame.” Eventually she escapes from the place and follows the artist, begging only to be allowed to remain near him. After a complicated series of spy activi¬ ties, secret attacks, and superhuman rescues, Philippa, who has sud¬ denly developed an amazingly perfect character, is proved to be a kidnapped Bulgarian princess, marries the artist, and lives happily ever after. It is hard to know just what would be the reaction of a girl toward such books. Would the vivid description of life in cabarets and houses of ill repute repel her, or would they arouse an unwholesome curiosity or even a spirit of investigation? Undoubtedly that would depend upon the individual, but one does not like to have girls read¬ ing such passages as this, from a speech of the artist mentioned above, before, like Benedict, he succumbs to fate: “I have no serious use for women. To me the normal and healthy woman is as naive as the domestic and blameless cat whose first ambition is for a mate, whose second is to be permanently and agreeably protected, and whose ultimate aim is to acquire a warm basket by the fireside and fill it full of kittens! Women! Ha! By the way, I’ve a bunch of them here in Sais, all painting away like the devil and all, no doubt, laying plans for that fireside basket. ’ ’ The following statement, taken recently from a theme upon the subject, “A Popular Author,” is rather illuminating: “Mary Roberts Rinehart’s books appeal to me because they aim to bring out the everyday happenings in life, especially in the criminal world. Her works make clear to one how very different one man is from another, and how constant cleverness and quick-wittedness can produce in one a master criminal. Any one will read a book wherein is revealed the SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 9 downfall or rise of a character, but few read a book that is ‘just so’ and rests on a level, so to speak, lest it transgress the bounds of con* ventionality.” (The italics are mine.) When a Man Marries is a novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart which will illustrate the meaning of the writer regarding the author who does not hesitate ‘‘to transgress the bounds of conventionality.” The plot consists of a clever and amusing impersonation, by a witty and frivolous woman, of the hero’s divorced wife, in order that his maiden aunt, upon whose money he is living, may not discover the truth. The entire atmosphere is one in which flirtation and divorce are the accepted standards of life, and the only character who protests is a prudish old woman who is made ridiculous throughout. Another choice specimen by a popular girlg’ author is The Hundredth Chance by Ethel Dell. The book consists of over 550 pages. The first 150 are occupied in explaining the situation which leads a proud young society girl to marry a man who is a gentleman by nature but a horse-trainer by profession; the next 400 tell a sordid story of his efforts to win his wife’s love, efforts that are thwarted partly by her pride and partly by the intrigues of a rich and titled scoundrel, intrigues which frequently come too near succeeding to be pleasant reading; while the final twenty pages relate the sensational rescue by the wife of her husband’s favorite horse, and the tardy but complete triumph of love. The quotation given above is only an unusually frank statement of the appeal which the tang of sensationalism has for some girls. And who can tell what morbid and unholy thoughts about marriage and motherhood are suggested by novels such as these? But grant¬ ing that much which strikes us older readers as suggestive or impure would slip harmlessly from the mind of the normal girl, there is still to be considered the false sentimentality of these novels. Rex Beach, Harold Bell Wright, Gene Stratton Porter, Ethel Dell, and a hundred others—do their books ring true to human life? Far more unwhole¬ some than any individual scenes which are suggestive of evil is this atmosphere of exaggerated and unreal sentiment. It has a tre¬ mendous fascination for the girl when her instinct for romance is at its height, but in the very measure in which it inculcates in her the * feeling that love is a strange, miraculous thing, coming as swiftly and mysteriously as Cupid’s arrow of classical traditions, and marriage 10 SOCIAL HYGIENE a relation governed by laws quite distinct from those that govern other human relations, in that measure it unfits her for the clear understanding, and the wise direction and control of her own developing nature. Now, what remedy, or better still, what preventive, can we as Eng¬ lish teachers offer ? One thing is clear: we must not ignore the desire of the girl, or of the boy in his later teens, for romance. Further¬ more we must not attempt to satisfy that desire by that which has no virile appeal to the youth of to-day just because it is classic. Fortunately there are among our classics books which have struck the universal note of human emotion and these do not lose their power. Let us take account of stock. Perhaps the books on our study lists which touch upon the sub¬ ject of sex naturally divide themselves into two classes: first, those which without any suggestion of evil relations present ideals of pure and chivalrous love; and secondly, those books which deal with the problem of evil passion. Of the first class such works at once sug¬ gest themselves as Ivanhoe, with its note of Saxon chivalry; The Lady of the Lake,, where pure romance is surrounded with poetic beauty; As You Like It, where the bubbling humor dissipates the atmosphere of sentimentality; Lorna Doone, where the adventures that love undertakes are all instigated by the protecting instinct of a strong and chivalrous manhood; The Tale of Two Cities, where Sidney Carton pays the extreme price of a pure and unselfish love; and the love lyrics of Burns or Wordsworth, where a universal emotion is expressed in perfect form. How do we teach classics like these? Do we avoid the discussion of the love element, for fear of arousing the sentimental or the frivolous? If we do, are we not in danger of leaving the impression that while hate or jealousy or cruelty or any other emotion known to man may be analyzed and talked about, love alone is to remain unmentioned, either because it is too silly to be worthy of serious consideration, or because it is too sacred and mysterious to be com¬ pared with other qualities of the human soul? Or may we treat it with an indulgent smile, perhaps, checking if need be any tendency toward a flippant attitude, but with a frankness and a sympathy which shall bring an answering flash of reverent appreciation for the love that is pure and strong? Surely it is good psychology that the SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 11 safest antidote against impurity is a mind filled with thoughts that are noble and true. And then there is that other class of books dealing with an impure or an unwise love. What are we doing with these books? In Silas Marner, for instance, do we pass too lightly over Godfrey’s early marriage, as a subject a little difficult to discuss, and the discussion capable of being misunderstood? Have we helped our pupils to trace clearly from the marriage—a marriage like many a modern example, born of alcohol and a momentary passion—its inevitable results: a woman betrayed, a child deprived of its birthright, a pure trusting wife deceived, and the author of all this evil himself unhappy because of a childless home and a never-ceasing dread of discovery! Have our pupils discovered here inexorable moral laws, or have they reached the conclusion that because Eppie found a home and redeemed a miser, good had come out of evil and the evil was therefore of com¬ paratively little account? Some one has said that in youth all life is b lack or white: the mixed greys come into their consciousness later. We need to see to it very carefully that we do not confuse their clear-cut standards of right and wrong with our subtler balancing of motives, and contributing causes; but that the ethical motive under¬ lying all great literature, that evil-doing brings suffering and remorse, is unmistakably clear. Then there are the Idylls of the King. Whatever critics may say about the signs of the decadence in Tennyson’s poetry, I believe these beautiful poems with their atmosphere of chivalry and purity, have an eternal appeal to boys and girls. But they should be taught for the human interest which they contain and not for meter and figures of speech, and “Guinevere” should never be omitted. The pupils will enter whole-souled into the tragedy of the Lancelot story. Let the teacher read earnestly, interpretively, Arthur’s farewell to Guinevere, and they will paint their own picture of Arthur bowed by personal suffering and despairing because his great ideal for man¬ kind has been overthrown, and of Guinevere wearing out her life in penitence and remorse because of a single sin. Read to them Lance¬ lot’s wild, passionate quest for the Holy Grail, and they will enter into the bitter experience of a soul which has rendered itself incapable of receiving the full spiritual blessing through the sin of yielding to an impure desire. 12 SOCIAL HYGIENE But it is not only through the books prescribed for class study that we may touch this problem. I believe that through our supplementary reading, which so easily degenerates into mere routine and drudgery, if we allow it to do so, we have an opportunity scarcely second to that of our class discussion. By means of carefully chosen supple¬ mentary lists and through wise direction on the part of the teacher, pupils may here be given valuable suggestions, more individual than the prescribed study books, to guide their own reading along the higher paths, and occasionally there is traceable a definite result along the line of our present discussion. May I illustrate from a bit of experience with The Scarlet Letter? Last year a boy who had chosen this book from the junior fiction list came to me when reports were due and said that his was not ready. I asked him if he had not read the book and he said, “Yes, but I want to read it again.” He read jt again, and at least parts of it three times, and then told me that he considered this the greatest book he had ever read. Recently another boy came to me with some question about his written report, also on The Scarlet Letter. After discussing the technical point involved, he said, “What do you think about the man in that book anyway?” Teacher-like, I counter-questioned, “What do you think?” He hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, I am not exactly sure, but I think he is kind of a coward. ’ ’ And this boy, too, said that he wanted to read it again. I used to question whether this book, because of its problem, should find a place on our reading lists. Now I am wondering if we should not make more use of it than we do. Not every pupil is equally im¬ pressed with it, of course, but if some boys draw of their own accord the conclusion that the man who will leave a woman to bear all the shame of guilt in which he has been at least an equal partner is a coward, it has accomplished a worthwhile purpose. The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede at once suggest themselves also. But more and more I am convinced that our reading lists for the last years of high school should contain novels which present the problem of social evil from a modern point of view. Such novels as The Awakening of Helena Richie and The Iron Woman by Mar¬ garet Deland, and The Bent Twig by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, I believe are wholesome reading. The latter especially I would recom- SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 13 mend for thoughtful senior girls. 1 The more frequently we can introduce our pupils into the society of authors who are not mere money-making scribblers but real interpreters of life, the more we shall have added to their power to resist evil suggestion. But we need the wisdom of the Great Teacher himself. Our mes¬ sage will not “get across” in the form of preaching or moralizing. Generally, the sermonette that is planned in advance is better un¬ spoken. We shall create the very thing we are trying to destroy if we act timidly or shamefacedly, and with uncertain touch. We shall do harm rather than good if we go farther than the bond of sympathy and confidence between us and our class will justify. It is well that we are being awakened to our responsibility in this matter; we should use every opportunity that presents itself, whether in the quiet word with a pupil who comes to talk over a book he has read, or in a more formal hour of class discussion, to help these young people to formu¬ late clearly and consciously the highest standards and ideals. We must ourselves be big enough to reach down into the heart of the boy or the girl with an understanding sympathy that is touched with rev¬ erence as we stand in the presence of the greatest of all mysteries, the mystery of an unfolding life, and then reach out into the crystallized experience of all human life and interpret to them the things which will make them more manly men and more womanly women. i If any of you have attempted to compile lists for supplementary reading, you realize how limited is the choice of stories which are genuinely interesting and at the same time stimulating and inspiring. Some one has said 11 most girls ’ books fall between the Scylla of sentimentality and the Charybdis of insanity. ” May'we not look to the literature of the near future for novels which shall be as red- blooded and ait the same time as wholesome for girls in their later teens as Little Women is for their younger sisters? OPPORTUNITIES FOR SEX EDUCATION IN ENGLISH CLASSES LOUISE B. THOMPSON English Department, Woodward High School, Cincinnati, Ohio It is a trite saying that all is grist that comes to the English mill; and we all recognize the fact that in no department of the school is such free reign given to the teacher, that nowhere is there such flexi¬ bility of method or such opportunity to create opportunity as in the. English department. As a result, the teacher of English is expected to contribute to every new movement. Any subject which can be expressed in words is thought to belong properly to the province of literature. Nevertheless, although English is what Aristotle termed an “organon”; and although the pupil may learn to manipulate the vernacular when he describes the working of an aeroplane engine or the cultivation and manufacture of cotton; and notwithstanding the fact that he can acquire fluency in the use of the English language by reading the newspaper or the trade magazine, the teacher of literature does not feel that she has entered her own field unless the subject under consideration, either for inter¬ pretation or self-expression, is one which has to do with human relations, motives of conduct, or the eternal verities. We teachers of English confess to a degree of resentment when we are asked to leave what we consider our proper sphere to contribute to the materialistic or commercial tendencies of education. We feel that, while a part of our work is with the necessary technique of language, and that in such connection, content matters but little, our great work is with the development of character. To such a subject as sex hygiene, therefore, we can contribute something, not scientific possibly, but nevertheless, supplementary and effective. The department of English has no suggestion to make with regard to the manner in which scientific sex information or instruction should be given. Our contribution consists, not in presenting facts concern¬ ing sex, but in emphasizing, illustrating, and vitalizing those facts. 14 SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 15 We recognize the truth that knowledge, in itself, has never made for purity, and that, for the adolescent, fact must be supplemented by concrete example. Our method is therefore indirect; probably, from a scientific point of view, vague; and for results we depend frankly upon the teachers’ capacity for inspiration. Building for uprightness of character is concerned with matters of manliness, womanliness, purity, honor, love, marriage, the home, the family, the state. These have, in all ages, been the themes of literature. In reading the classics, boys and girls come face to face with figures of heroic size who have engaged in the age-old conflicts. It is not difficult, therefore, for the teacher of English to pave an approach to the boy or girl who is struggling with the tangle of his own personal life. So analogous are the problems of the child’s life with those of characters in books that most of us are agreed that a valuable opportunity is lost when the teacher ignores sex problems, or refuses to meet them squarely, and we have worked out more or less roughly a platform of principles and methods, by which we hope to bridge the gap between the book and the child. We teach our pupils that a book, to be true, must portray real persons; that we do not expect to find absolutely perfect characters in fiction or biography any more than we do in school; that we must not be more blind to the faults of our ideal character than to his virtues; that ignorance of the facts of life does not constitute innocence, and that willful blindness in the face of these facts is wicked. Emphasizing, when opportunity arises, these general principles, we are ready to discuss frankly and fearlessly the specific example. Formal method is conspicuous by its absence, for we realize that anything like obvious design would hamper rather than help us in our efforts. To illustrate, let us review the books read in high school, note their relation to the age and ideals of the pupil, and consider some of the problems that may arise. The classics read in high schools through¬ out the country have been chosen carefully with reference to the age of the pupil, his natural interests and ideals. Accordingly, in the ninth grade, we find books of action and adventure, of daring and doing. Here we emphasize honor, fair-play, self-restraint, true bravery. At this period, the child’s interest is not largely introspec¬ tive, and his hero’s struggle must be with an external foe. In the tenth grade, we read together our first romances. The love 16 SOCIAL HYGIENE motive is accepted as a matter of course, and we read the tales frankly for enjoyment, touching here and there questions of loyalty and honor. The boy admires Fitz James’s sportsmanship and Ellen’s constancy. He can learn the lesson of “noblesse oblige” when with Ellen Douglas he enters the guardroom of Sterling Castle. The sincere, though rough chivalry of John of Brent contrasts strongly with the pseudo-gallantry of Lewis, who alters his manner so quickly when he discovers that Ellen is not the unprotected maiden he thought her. When we read Ivanhoe, the pupils memorize the oath of Arthur’s knights from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King: * ‘ To reverence the king as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their king, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride about redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honor his own word as if his God’s, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her; ...” They recognize the dishonor of the Templar’s love for Rebecca, and some of them realize the degradation of Ulrica. The question of secret marriage may be discussed here, as also in Kenilworth and later in Silas Marner. It is interesting to note the willingness of boys and girls to discuss what constitutes a perfect marriage. They can be made to see that physical attraction is only one element, and that intellectual companionship, harmony of tastes, etc., must also be considered. The impossibility of a happy union between Godfrey Cass and Molly, in Silas Marner, and the dishonor of Steerforth’s attentions to “little Emily” in David Copperfield require but little translation. Pupils who have grasped the full meaning of these situa¬ tions will not be long in discovering the falsity in the sensational movie or magazine. The teacher will find abundant opportunity to speak to the pupils quite naturally of the home and family that will be theirs, and of their duty to transmit to posterity strong bodies and lofty souls. The naturalness and beauty of the family relation should be empha¬ sized whenever possible. In “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” and in stories of New England pioneer life will be found good illustrations; there are beautiful features in the domestic life of Dick Steel, and in SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 17 the career of Dr. Johnson a wonderful example of both loyalty to w T ife and of unfailing kindness to unfortunate members of a household. Frequent as are the opportunities for emphasis upon this question of sex relations throughout the high school, it is in the eleventh and twelfth grades that there come the supreme opportunities for frank discussions of the relations between men and women. Here, however, we find a change in our pupils. Since they discussed Rebecca and the Templar, Ulrica and Front de Boeuf, our pupils have grown older. Problems have ceased to be exterior to themselves. Each boy or girl realizes that one of these persons might be himself. Everything has grown more personal. The task of the teacher has become more delicate, but should, nevertheless, be faced with the same definiteness of purpose. When we studied the hero stories with little children or ninth-graders, we emphasized courage in act; when we return to the Arthur tales in the senior year, we read Tennyson’s “Idylls” with the modern message added to the epic. The eloquent picture of Gareth, the kitchen-knave in Arthur’s court who wrought All kind of service with a noble ease That graced the lowliest act in doing it. .But if their talk were foul, Then would he whistle rapid as any lark, Or carol some old roundelay, and so loud That first they mocked, but after, reverenced him. will give strength to many a lad who is taking his stand for upright¬ ness. Sir Galahad’s “My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure.” becomes our text. We use the expression “sense at war with soul.” We speak of our dual natures, and the supremacy of the spiritual. All are silent before the beauty of Tennyson’s verse, especially when the Grail, though veiled, passes before the eyes of the all-but-pure Lancelot. There is but little need for speech on the part of the teacher. The class is upon holy ground. When the class is studying a great tragedy, there is abundant opportunity for emphasizing results of wrong ways of living. Boys and girls should be taught that tragedy, the real tragedy, consists in the destruction by an individual of his own character; that the reac- 18 SOCIAL HYGIENE tion is sure whether of Macbeth’s active crime or of Hamlet’s inde¬ cision. They should be impressed with the fact that, though payment would be justly exacted of the sinner himself, the slow-grinding mills demand payment through generations. If Hawthorne’s stories be used, there will be found many opportunities for emphasizing eter¬ nal justice and its retributive working through conscience. The Puritan conception of the furies of Aeschylus, the steady pursuit of conscience through all avenues, speak volumes on the subject of per¬ sonal taint. In The House of Seven Gables Hawthorne visualizes the eternal truth that seeds sown in one generation will be harvested by many generations. What an opportunity to present moral truths is presented when Wordsworth’s theories concerning memory are being considered! How impressive may the idea be made that nothing is ever erased; that the palimpsest of youth may be covered over with the writing of age, but that the early writing will work itself through to the surface! This same thought is brought out when the class disagrees with Duncan’s philosophy in Macbeth: 11 There’s no art to find The mind’s construction in the face.” These considerations will lead easily to the discussion of old age as Wordsworth presents it, or as Adam in As You Like It exemplifies it, and as Macbeth fails to find when he wails “And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have, but in their stead, curses. ’ ’ In Comus the subject of chastity is baldly considered. Here r the text needs no comment, and the emphasis may be placed on the ability of the pure soul to keep itself pure. Milton reiterates his theme: Virtue may be assailed but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled. Virtue could see to do what virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. Not only to personal, but also to collective morality must our pupils’ attention be directed. Through the study of American patri otic prose, we may examine into the causes of our country’s great SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 19 ness, and touch upon the dangers which menace it. We may make liberal use of statistics and graphs, and analyze the characteristics and potentialities of Americans. It is not difficult to lead from a discussion of the literacy of our people to their physical condition, stature, and health; and under some conditions, army statistics of disease might possibly be used. There is among teachers a difference of opinion as to whether effective teaching can be better accomplished in separate classes of boys and girls than in mixed classes. Obviously, many things may be said more directly in separate classes; but at the same time, there is a loss that must be taken into account. We must consider whether the teacher cannot go “just far enough” in a mixed class, and whether, after all, .the‘ good results of an exchange of views between the sexes may not be especially valuable. As boys and girls grow older, they become interested not only in books, but in their authors; and as they read biography, new consid¬ erations arise. They read, too, lyric poetry, and must necessarily know something of the life of the man whose self-expression they analyze. The wise teacher does not attempt to gloze over the errors of the great. The pupil is told that we learn from the mistakes of others as well as from their successes. Burns, especially, presents difficulties on the personal side. To many, Burns is the first poet to whose appeal they can respond. He is to them so human, so like themselves. They are puzzled, nevertheless, by his vicarious loves, and shocked at his dissipation. To it all, the eloquent answer is his death at thirty-seven. We read aloud to them (with much cutting) Stevenson’s study of Burns, and stress Carlyle’s dictum that society is to blame for failure to provide proper environment for her son of genius. Possibly the greatest opportunity which comes to the teacher of English who has succeeded in gaining the confidence of her pupils upon the personal side, lies in the recommendation of outside reading. We teachers have no right not to know the newer books nearer to the interests of the pupils than those we read when we were in high school. Most high school pupils are reluctant to admit their predilection for love stories. The teacher who can lead her pupils to appreciate the beautiful love story in The Jessamy Bride; the love of slow and steady growth in Lorna Boone; the love based on respect in She 20 SOCIAL HYGIENE Stoops to Conquer; the love revealed through self-respect in Enoch Arden ; by being able to enjoy with them 0. Henry’s charming love stories, can wield a wonderful power for good. Dorothy Canfield’s The Bent Twig has been known to produce results better than could be obtained from ten lectures on personal relations between boys and girls. The teacher of English and the librarian by tactful suggestion can do much to counteract the baneful efforts of the salacious movie and the indiscriminating household magazine. Furthermore, the teacher of English has a conspicuous advantage over her scientific colleagues, in that she has, in her composition classes, a means of measuring the reaction of class discussions, out¬ side reading, and other external influences. Pupils’ themes often in¬ dicate the degree of success or failure of our efforts. Sometimes they are wonderfully illuminating. From some book reports and editorials written by pupils in senior general and commercial courses, I have been permitted to select the following: One boy says: “I think that we could attack moral problems more successfully if we knew more about them.” A girl says: “I have heard people discuss what they call the double standard. . . . Why should a girl try her best to be what she cannot find in her masculine friends ? ’ ’ Another girl: “I read a book recently about a girl who was avoided because of the sin of her parents. Instead of being told about marriage and the sacredness of such a ceremony, she had a wrong impression. Not finding true friendship in woman, she put her faith in a man who abused it. ’ ’ A boy: ‘ ‘ Since reading this book, I have determined to abandon my friends whose thoughts are on vice and to seek friends who are clean- minded. I realize that a clean mind will bring sincere friends. Even if I don’t gain another thing in life, I will say I have had a great victory. ’’ Still another boy: “I have had the good fortune to read a book written for the benefit of girls. I found a book called The Little> Lost Sister. Being a boy without sisters, I felt a curiosity to read it. . . . Now this story started me to thinking what I would do if I had a sis¬ ter, and I came to the conclusion that I would try to take the greatest SEX INSTRUCTION THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE 21 care of her, if only I had a sister. ’ ’ The teacher added : “ And since you haven’t, of course you will protect other boys’ sisters.” I cannot refrain from quoting an editorial which shows how the English teacher frequently can see results of work done in other de¬ partments. We have at present in our school an unusual group of boys in the agricultural class, whose instructor is teaching sex hygiene in an effective way, though this branch of instruction is not mentioned in the curriculum. He may be surprised to know that his colleagues know what he is doing. The librarian tells us that these boys read The Journal of Heredity regularly and ask for Guyer’s Being Well Born as naturally as they ask for the Scientific American. An impromptu editorial written by one of these boys shows what he is thinking: Most of us are familiar with the old fable about the young man who worked for a terrible giant. It was his task to clean out the giant’s stable. But the strange part about it was, as fast as the refuse was thrown out one door, a corresponding amount came in another door. It can be seen that the stable was never cleaned. Cannot the moral of this fable be applied to the methods of our state institutions for the insane, feeble-minded, and degenerate? In¬ stead of allowing nature’s law of the survival of the fittest to take its course we are fostering and protecting those who, by the very order of things, would perish if in competition with the fit. After being judged as cured, these unfit individuals are released and are allowed to do as they wish, which in a large number of cases, is to marry and produce offspring which in time are thrown into the care of our institutions and so on unendingly. It is shown by statistics that in the state of Massachusetts the number of feeble-minded and unfit doubles every thirty years. Does not this sound the death knell of the race ? Something must be done ! We do not hesitate to send our stalwart, healthy young men off to war to be slaughtered by the thousands and tens of thousands, but it is regretful [sic] to say that when drastic measures are mentioned as a means of preventing the deterioration of the race, many of us are inclined to dodge the question, sometimes on the basis that is is not nice to talk about. 22 SOCIAL HYGIENE It seems to me this question promises in the future to be one of the things that must enter the minds of thinking people as one of the largest questions ever put before the American people. Can we refuse to meet this boy on his own grounds? In conclusion, allow me to repeat: the teachers of English do assist, though indirectly, in building a structure for purity. We expect to appeal to the spiritual side of sex life. We expect to emphasize ‘ ‘ the good, the true, the beautiful ”; to assist in the control of the will. We endeavor to establish relations of confidence with our pupils which will make discussions of vital questions with proper individuals frank and free from unworthy suggestion. Our aim is to create habits of right thought. Let me make very clear our position. We are engaged in a labor the results of which are distant and difficult to measure. We do not claim that either our subject or our method has curative powers. Possibly we never, probably seldom, arrest a downward career. Our work is, we think, preventive. We know that we can supplement the work of the teacher of biology and the social worker. Our hope is that the ideals to which we introduce our pupils will bear them on and up.