Sin,—May I comment on Mr. B. H. Garnons Williams' article,
Sex and • the School? He seems to envisage sex education as completed in one or two talks with a boy. In girls' schools where sex education is intelli- gently given it is set within the framework of the home and home-making ; it is not isolated, but is made part of a much larger course spread throughout the girls' school life. It is not regarded as the imparting of a few " facts of life," and that is why sex education is much more satis- factorily given in girls' schools than in boys' schools. I can take Mr. Williams into schools in city areas where, if boys and girls have not been given some sex instruction before the age of twelve (the age he suggests), they will have found out all the so-called " facts of life" for themselves in a manner which is calculated to have a bad effect on them for the whole of life.
Mr. Williams bases his conclusions on the fact that " some boys and girls find public discussion of sex highly embarrassing" ; this is true, but it is equally true that many don't, and my own experience suggests that the majority of boys and girls much prefer group instruction to private instruction. The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to give hard and fast rules about sex education which will cover all types of schools and areas in which the schools are situated. But with Mr. Williams I am in complete agreement when he states that in the schools sex education is the teacher's job, and not the task of the expert ; though let us not forget that it is the expert who has done a lot of spade-work in this field during the last few years.—Yours sincerely, F. F. RIGBY, Education Secretary to the Manchester Diocesan Council for Moral Welfare Work.
Room 25, Church House,
go Deansgate, Manchester, 3.
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