it is very important
that there be no serious mistakes in selecting the teachers.

[Sidenote: Sex specialists not desirable.]

I have mentioned special teachers as necessary for instruction with
direct reference to specialists human life. I hasten to add that I
still agree with the report of the special committee (Morrow, _et al._)
of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene that it is not desirable
that any teacher should make a specialty of this type of instruction
and of no other. We do not want "sex specialists" in the schools (see
pp. 10 and 20-23 of the Report of the Committee). It is important that
all teachers should have general information regarding the sex problems
of young people in order to be able to help individual pupils.

Sec. 21. _Certain Undesirable Teachers for Special Hygienic and Ethical
Instruction_

It will be most helpful if we consider the problem of selecting
teachers with a view to rejecting those who certainly should not
undertake the special hygienic and ethical teaching, for teachers who
are good in other subjects and who are fortunately free from certain
disqualifications discussed in the following, may by means of study
adapt themselves for the final and most important stages of
sex-education.

There are five types of teachers who should be regarded as disqualified
for teaching personal sex-hygiene and sex-ethics.

[Sidenote: Embarrassed teachers.]

First, those men and women who are unable to speak of sex-hygiene as
calmly and seriously as they do of any other phase of hygiene had
better not undertake the instruction of young people. There are many
such men and women among teachers who, so far as scientific training is
concerned, ought to be good teachers of sex-hygiene. As an illustration
of this attitude that leaves the wrong impression with students, it is
reported that a good teacher of hygiene recently prefaced a brief talk
to college girls as follows: "I shall now consider a process that no
cultured woman ever mentions except with bated breath. I refer to
menstruation."

[Sidenote: Abnormal teachers.]

The second kind of people who should not teach sex-hygiene are the men
and women who are the unfortunate victims of sexual abnormality, either
physical or psychical, that more or less influences their outlook on
life. Certain neurotic and hysterical men or women who lack thorough
physiological training and whose own sexual disturbances have led them
to devour omnivorous