Instead, it blunts them, restricts them, hinders them, and
even attempts to eradicate them.
This has been the great defect of sex education as it has been practised
in recent years. Based on a superficial and shameful view of the sexual
instinct, it has sought the inculcation of negative virtues by pointing
out the sinister penalties of promiscuity, and by advocating strict
adherence to virtue and morality, not on the basis of intelligence or
the outcome of experience, not even for the attainment of rewards, but
merely to avoid punishment in the form of painful and malignant
disease. Education so conceived carries with it its own refutation. True
education cannot tolerate the inculcation of fear. Fear is the soil in
which are implanted inhibitions and morbid compulsions. Fear restrains,
restricts, hinders human expression. It strikes at the very roots of joy
and happiness. It should therefore be the aim of sex education to avoid
above all the implanting of fear in the mind of the pupil.
Restriction means placing in the hands of external authority the power
over behavior. Birth Control, on the contrary, implies voluntary action,
the decision for one's self how many children one shall or shall not
bring into the world. Birth Control is educational in the real sense
of the word, in that it asserts this power of decision, reinstates this
power in the people themselves.
We are not seeking to introduce new restrictions but greater freedom. As
far as sex is concerned, the impulse has been more thoroughly subject to
restriction than any other human instinct.
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