I have never had a pupil who did not bring to Summerhill a
diseased attitude toward sexuality and bodily functions. The
children of modern parents who were told the truth about
where babies come from have much the same hidden attitude
toward sex that the children of religious fanatics have. To find
a new orientation to sex is the most difficult task of the parent
and teacher.

We know so little of the causes of the sex taboo that we can
only hazard guesses as to its origin. Why there is a sex taboo is
of no immediate concern to me. That there is a sex taboo is of
great concern to a man entrusted to cure repressed children.

We adults were corrupted in infancy; we can never be free
about sex matters. Consciously, we may be free; we may even
be members of a society for the sex education of children. But
I fear that unconsciously we remain to a large extent what con-
ditioning in infancy made of us: haters of sex and fearers of sex.

I am quite willing to believe that my unconscious attitude
toward sex is the Calvinistic attitude a Scottish village imposed
on me in my first years of life. Possibly there is no salvation for
adults; but there is every chance of salvation for children, if
we do not force on them the awful ideas of sex that were forced
on us.

Early in life, the child learns that the sexual sin is the great
sin. Parents invariably punish most severely for an offense
against sex morality. The very people who rail against Freud
because he "sees sex in everything" are the ones who have told
sex stories, have listened to sex stories, have laughed at sex
stories. Every man who has been in the army knows that the

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