ous, but because it is based on a
confusion which contains within itself the elements of disruption. We
have to remember, however, that the creation of a new tradition cannot
be effected in a day. Before we begin to teach sexual hygiene the
teachers must themselves be taught.

There are many who have insisted, and not without reason, on the right
of the parent to control the education of the child. Sexual hygiene
introduces us to another right, the right of the child to control the
education of the parents. For few parents to-day are fitted to exercise
the duty of training and guiding the child in the difficult field of sex
without preliminary education, and such education, to be real and
effective, must begin at an early age in the parents' life.[187]

The school teacher, again, on whom so many rely for the initial stage in
sexual hygiene, is at present often in almost exactly the same stage of
ignorance or prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The
teacher has seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary
scientific knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual
hygiene, and is more often than not without that personal experience of
life in its various aspects which is required in order to teach wisely
in such a difficult field as that of sex, even if the principle is
admitted that the teacher in class, equally whether addressing one sex
or both sexes, is not called upon to go beyond the scientific, abstract,
and objective aspects of sex.

This difficulty of the lack of suitable teachers is not, indeed,
insuperable. It would be largely settled, no doubt, if a wise and
thorough course of sexual hygiene and puericulture formed part of the
training of all school teachers, as, in France, Pinard has proposed for
the Normal schools for young women. Dr. W.O. Henry, in a paper read
before the Nebraska State Medical Association in May, 1911, put forward
the proposal: "Let each State have one or more competent physicians
whose duty it shall be to teach these things to the children in all the
public schools of the State from the time they are eight years of age.
The boys and girls should be given the instruction separately by means
of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views, beginning with the lower
forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing with the organs in man.
These lectures and illustrations should be given every year to all the
boys and girls separately, having those from eight t