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.
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