We are not proposing to organize a campaign to raise money for the feeding of children in the Near East or in the very Far West. Neither are we going to point out the great desirability of every person having his vitamins, and his iodine, and his iron to-day. We are not going to rail against the hasty breakfast, nor the improper preparation of foods, nor the unbalanced ration, nor the great prevalence of malnourished school children.
No people in the entire world have ever been so well and generously advised on food values as we are today. But man, and in particular a child, does not live by bread alone. There are other things than food that are essential to the proper development of a child.
Old Mother Nature is tremendously interested in the propagation of the various kinds of plants and animals that inhabit the earth. She is also interested in the continuation of the human species, provided that species is fit to continue. Culture, civilization, science, religion, the school, the home, society, the industries—everythingdepend upon the perpetuation of the race. Problems then involving the procreation of the species must be adjudged as being of extraordinary importance.
Nature is no fool. Indeed not ! She has been on the job for a long time, and we must admit that she has done well in spite of the fact that certain prudish sisters think that some details of the way of life might be very materially improved. Blind teachers and parents may insist that the youth and maiden " had better have their minds on their books," but the wise old Mistress of the Ages turns the thoughts of adolescence to the eternal verities of Life, and in so doing she is right and prudent.
We older ones, however, have scarcely understood; our children have asked us for facts and we have given them fiction; they have asked for " do " and we have given them " don't "; they have asked their noble source, and we have told them of doctor's satchels, Sears-Roebuck orders, or have spun the " Made in Germany" story of the stork. We have rebuked them for their innocent questions until they no longer ask them, but blunder through the formative years of life like a thousand ancestors who have gone the same way making countless costly errors and occasionally finding the light.
How discouraged Nature must get in her search for teachers in her school! She has begged and implored parents to take the position, but mostly they have been deaf—and dumb. She has suggested to the school teachers and the preachers that she would like their help, but they have held up righteous hands and supposedly empty minds claiming that they knew nothing at all of such base things; they have been too busy -with routine to find time to set the boys and girls right on vital matters. Yet the children must be taught somehow, since it is impossible that they can grow to be men and women and not know how the race is reproduced. So Nature has been compelled to use the eagerly proffered services of older boys and girls (themselves needing wholesome instruction), of perverts, and of libertines. For a school house she is compelled to use the alley, the hay mow, the deserted house, the vacant lot or garage; for text books she has obscene magazines, vulgar stories, quack medical literature, and lewd pictures. A FINE SCHOOL INDEED!
And yet these same children going to Nature's school in the alley have been asking that they be taught these vital matters at home at their parent's knee. How dare we risk the ruin of their health and perhaps their precious lives by leaving them in ignorance when they are asking us for the truth !
BOYS, all boys except the very depraved ones, if there be such, will thrill to the theme of glorious manhood—hard fighting, clean-living manhood. They are asking us for the food that will make men of boys, and we are giving them trash and lies. Their better-selves are being starved.
GIRLS are being raised on the theory that ignorance is the hand-maiden of innocence and virtue, whereas she is actually the twin sister and the inseparable companion of disease and sin. Though few of them are really trained for the job, most of them will fortunately becomes wives and mothers. Might it not be well to feed them such food, mental food, as will help them to the attainment of success in this the noblest of all careers? Girls are—until trained otherwise—more interested in cooking than in culture; more attracted to sewing than to stenography; more thrilled by babies than by books; and better satisfied in the love of a glorious home than in the lure of a glamorous career. It is indeed well that they are so, for this is Nature's assurance that the race shall not perish from the earth.
WE have busied ourselves with charities and clinics, with diagnosis and dope, while the very fundamentals of life—the origins of life itself—have concerned us not at all. Great progress is being made in prevention of many ills but, through ignorance, venereal disease runs on apace.
Sex is fundamental; it is beautiful; it is unavoidable. It makes and breaks the lives of men and women as does nothing else. Our children, instinctively seeing and feeling these immense responsibilities, dangers, and privileges, are asking for guidance, as if they were starving children asking for food. Surely they will not be injured by the sacred and holy thing called TRUTH! SHALL WE FEED THEM OR LET THEM STARVE?
Source:
Hargis, Jeanette, M.D. What to Tell the Public About Health. New York: American Public Health Association, 1933. Print.
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