a class. Alan was sitting in the front seat, and
behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest
child." The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's
younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest. Here again I cannot see
why any censor should change a theory into a child.

* * * * *
In my _Log_ I make a very, very poor statement about sex instruction.
I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory
of birth until the age of nine. That was a wrong belief, but then at
that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll. I see now that the
child should be told the truth about sex whenever he asks for
information. But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have
sexually educated their child when they tell him where babies come
from. The physiological side of sex is the less important; you can
take a child through all the usual stages--pollination of plants,
fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find
no help in these informations when he faces his sex instinct at
adolescence. Sex instruction should be psychological; it should deal
with the sex instinct as one form of life force or libido. The child
should be led to face it openly. It should be entirely dissociated
from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.

Who is to give the instruction? That is the difficulty. Most parents
and teachers cannot do it because their own sex instinct is all wrong.
Make a remark about sex in the company of adults, and it will be
reacted to in two ways; some will grin and laugh; others will be
shocked. I hasten to add that the shocked ones are worse than the
laughers. The laugh is a release of sex repressions; the shocked
appearance is a compensation for an unconscious over-interest in sex.
Anyway neither type is capable of talking about sex to children, and
since humanity is roughly divided into prudes and sinners (not saints
and sinners), there is little hope of a frank sex education for kiddies.

Many people say: "Oh, leave it to the doctors," but personally I
haven't enough faith in doctors. Their attitude to sex is usually no
better than the attitude of the layman. I know doctors who could give
excellent instruction to children on the physiology of sex, but the
only doctors of my acquaintance who could teach the psychological side
are psycho-analysts or psycho-therapists of some sort.

Teache