If the child's questions are answered truthfully and without
inhibition on the part of the parents , sex instruction becomes
part of natural childhood. The pseudoscientific method is bad.
I know a youth who was taught sex in this way, and he claims
that he blushes when someone uses the word pollen. The factual
truth about sex is, of course, important, but what's more im-
portant is the emotional content. Doctors know all about the
anatomy of sex, but they are not better lovers than the South
Sea Islanders--most likely they are not nearly as good.

The child is not so much interested in daddy's statement that
he puts his wee-wee into mother's wee-wee as he is in why
daddy does it. The child who has been allowed his own sex
play will not need to ask why.

Sex instruction should not be necessary for a self-regulated
child, for the term instruction implies previous neglect of the
subject. If the child's natural curiosity has been satisfied all the
way by open and unemotional answers to all his questions, sex
will not stand out as something that has to be specially taught.
After all, we do not give a child lessons on his digestive appara-
tus or his excretory functions. The term sex instruction springs
from the fact that sex activity is inhibited and made a mystery.

Inclusion of sex instruction in the public school curriculum
provides dangerous opportunities for encouraging sex repression
by moralizing . The mere term sex instruction suggests a formal,
awkward lesson on anatomy and physiology by a timid teacher
who fears that the subject may slip over the border into for-
bidden territory.

In most public schools, to tell the whole truth about love and

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