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IS. and a stamped addressed envelope to the Dalcroze School of Eurhythmics, Ltd., 23, Store Street, W.C.1.

The annual Summer Fête of the Fallow Corner Home for Homeless Children, Granville Road, North Finchley, an institution now being carried on under the auspices of the Shaftesbury Society, will be opened on Saturday, July 6, at 3 p.m., by H.R.H. Princess Louise.

A Week of Prayer for the Church, arranged by the Life and Liberty Movement, will be held in St. Margaret's, Westminster, July 8-12 inclusive. Particulars may be obtained from the Life and Liberty Movement offices, 117, Victoria Street, S. W. 1.

The National Children's Home and Orphanage, the headquarters of which are at 104-122, City Road, E.C.1, will hold its annual Festival Service in celebration of the forty-ninth anniversary of the institution, at St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, on Wednesday, July 10, at 12 noon, when the Rev. Canon J. H. B. Masterman, M.A., will preach, and the Lord Mayor of London will attend in

state.

In connection with the Babies of the Empire Society, the offices of which are at General Buildings, Aldwych, W.C.2, Dr. Truby King, C.M.G., will give a series of lectures and demonstrations on "The Feeding and Care of Infants" at the Babies of the Empire Mothercraft Training Centre, 29-31, Trebovir Road, Earl's Court, S. W.5, on July 9, 11, 16, 19, 23 and 26, at 5.30 p.m. Under the auspices of the L.C.C., Dr. F. Truby King will deliver courses of lectures on "The Care of Mother and Child, with special reference to the Work of Midwives," at (1) Birkbeck College, Bream's Buildings, Fetter Lane, E.C., on July 8, 15 and 22, at 4 p.m.; and (2) Morley College, Waterloo Road, S.E.1, on July 10, 18 and 24, at 4 p.m.

A summer Re-union of Superintendents and Officers of Missions and Cripple Aid Districts of the Shaftesbury Society will be held at the Wright-Kingsford Home for Children, Fallow Corner, Great North Road, North Finchley, on Saturday, July 13, at 3 p.m.

The annual gathering of the Sunshine Guild will be held at the Mansion House, London, on Tuesday, July 16, at 3 p.m., when the Lord Mayor will preside, supported by H.R.H. Princess Arthur of Connaught and many wellknown workers for child welfare.

A holiday course in Rhythmic Movement and Improvisation will be held in Edinburgh, July 29 to August 10. Prospectus on application to the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics (the Dalcroze School of Eurhythmics, Ltd.), 23, Store Street, London, W.C.1.

The Educational Handwork Association have arranged for Summer Schools on Handwork at Bangor, Falmouth, St. Anne's-on-Sea, on Physical Training at Bangor, from July 29 to August 24. Prospectus and full information may be obtained as follows: Bangor School.Mr. J. Tipping, 35, Lower Rushton Road, Bradford. Falmouth School.-Mr. C. Seaman, 38, Victoria Park Avenue, Cardiff. St. Anne's-on-Sea School.-Prof. J. A. Green, M.A., The University, Sheffield.

In connection with the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, the tenth annual Summer School will be held for three weeks from July 30. Instruction will be provided in the following subjects Library service, history, school horticulture, art and handwork, principles of teaching and principles of accounting. Further particulars and entrance form may be obtained from the Registrar of the College.

St. Andrews Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers have arranged for a class in Educational Garden Work to be held at the College Gardens, Kirkton of Mains, near Dundee, August 1 to 23. This class is open to all teachers in actual service, and is proposed with a view to the granting of a qualification under Article 39 in the School Gardening part of the Rural School Course. The fee is 155., and the course will be 120 hours. Enrolment form, lodging list, and any further particulars may be obtained from Mr. James Malloch, Director of Studies of the Training College, Dundee.

GREAT THOUGHTS ON CHILD LIFE AND

CHILD WELFARE.

Under this heading are gathered quotations from the works of those who have formed ideals or dealt with actualities relating to child life and child welfare. It is hoped that many of our readers will assist in the compilation of this page by sending any helpful thoughts which they may have found of service in their own experience or discovered in the course of their general reading.

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"It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly frame of spirit, and an upright life, amid contention, as it is to keep your candle lighted in the greatest storms.'

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Our great interest in biography is due to the desire to see that the child is father to the man "; in other words, to see how, from boyhood to manhood and from manhood to old age, through all change of circumstances and all widening of intellectual and practical interests, we can detect the same unique, individual nature, and link each new expression of it in speech and action with that which preceded it."

EDWARD CAIRD.

Sporting through the forest wide ;
Playing by the waterside;
Wandering o'er the healthy fells,
Down within the woodland dells;
All among the mountains wild
Dwelleth many a little child !

Little children, not alone
On the wide earth are ye known,
'Mid its labours and its cares,
'Mid its sufferings and its snares:
Free from sorrow, free from strife,
In the world of love and life,
Where no sinful thing has trod,
In the presence of your God,
Spotless, blameless. glorified,
Little children, ye abide ! ''

MARY HOWITT.

THE CHILD.

A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO CHILD WELFARE.

No. II.

AUGUST, 1918.

Vol. VIII.

PRUDERY AND THE CHILD.

By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

Author of "The Psychology of Marriage," "A Text-book of Sex Education," "The Great Unmarried," &c.

THE home and school nurture of children, moral, mental, and hygienic, is concerned chiefly with the direction of the amative life to the highest personal, social, and racial virtue and happiness. This vital essence of education is now recognized by many parents and teachers. But the mass of men and women do not realize their parental and civic responsibilities. In the average family there is no training of the young in the conduct of the strongest of the human emotions and physiological impulses. Not only is such guidance neglected, but it is even condemned in many cases as a danger to sexual morality.

Many parents assume that Nature leads rightly in this matter of sex, and that "instinct "is the true teacher. This perilous fallacy is accountable for much mental suffering, bodily disorder, sexual aberration, and vice. Nature" teaches" the animal assailed with a periodic appetite how to appease it without injury to itself, to offspring, and the herd. Man lacks this automatic direction of behaviour. He cannot find his way in the jungle by scent, or by a mysterious faculty which is the secret of the brute and the migratory bird. In all of his supreme activities man is forced to employ reflection, reason, and the method of trial and error. A mouse knows the right way to nourish and bring up her young, while a civilized woman, without experience, needs instruction in the care of her children.

I hold that the greatest impediment to rational education in sex ethics and hygiene is prudery. This factor of intellectual and moral degeneration is as far removed from modesty as love is from hate. The prude is an abnormality. He or she is at variance with the whole

scheme of Nature. The immense prevalence of prudery in the civilized communities is no evidence of the essential normality of the phenomenon. We all tend to more or less prudishness in our attitude to sex.

Analysed to its fundamental source, prudery is a morbid dread of the human body, mingled with lascivious secret feeling. Absolute modesty banishes prudery. To the pure all things are pure. Modesty is primarily an instinct to avoid causing disgust in others, but this sense is not inborn. The young child has to be taught modest behaviour. Children when untaught have no shame for nakedness, and no reserve in performing excretory functions. Unfortunately most juvenile education tends to the development of prudishness more than to true modesty.

The accentuation of shame for the body causes a false attitude to sex in the great majority of minds. In an endeavour to inculcate. decency, most parents unconsciously stimulate undue preoccupation with the reproductive organs and their use. It is necessary to teach the child that it is contrary to refinement and consideration for others to cause disgust by speech or actions. This is the cardinal precept of modesty. But it is fatal to instil the idea that there is anything inherently impure or indecent in the human body. When a child is told that the body is "the temple of divinity," and also that the body is contemptible or "vile," an utterly confused and contradictory valuation of sex is sure to arise in the mind. The not unnatural conclusion of the unformed intelligence will be that of the uncultured ascetics of old, who asserted that the brain and organs of the upper part of the body of man were the work of divine wisdom, and that the body below the waist was designed by demonic powers.

The attempt to over-value one set of organs at the expense of others is an extremely dangerous experiment. If parents and teachers unwisely stress the view that the racial or germinal function is the “lower" or "purely animal," and endeavour to minimize its importance by exalting the higher functions of the brain, children are apt to associate sex with physical manifestations alone. If we wish to spiritualize the sexual impulse and its activities, we must teach the truth that the generative system is closely linked with, and indeed inseparable from, the cerebral organization. Instead of representing sex as an instance of man's decline from a high estate, we should explain that it is precisely our complexity, range, variation, and expansion of the erotic emotion which chiefly distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The fact that human beings are more under the dominion of the passion of love than the brutes should be pointed out clearly to all adolescents. But there must be full explanation of the equally important truth that it is just this higher development of the impulse in man that endows him with the finer psychic potentialities. From this heightened amative capacity spring the highest forms of altruism in conduct. The enhanced power to love and to bestow happiness to the loved person calls forth all that is noblest in humanity. From the primary erotic need develop parental solicitude, self-denials, and frequently the finest heroism. By the sublimation of the vital yearning of sex man may become, in the true sense," the lord of creation."

Prudery is completely inimical to rational and moral estimates of sexual love. The attitude of disesteem for the body, and disgust for that which is not repellent to the sane mind and normal senses, cause some of the grossest distortions of judgment upon life and human nature. Attempted concealments, evasions, and falsehoods bewilder the minds of children, and create the spurious mystery that intensifies secret curiosity. The very disgust evoked imparts a morbid fascination to the subject of sex. That which is taboo and esoteric arouses the keenest curiosity and speculation, and an ill-directed or unappeased inquisitiveness frequently becomes obsessive and disordered.

The prudery of many parents exposes their children to serious risk of corruption. It is now known that sexuality in the normal child is frequently aroused spontaneously by processes within the body, and that undesirable practices are acquired without teaching or example. There is the menace that infantile and childish impressions may become fixed, and that perversion may result in adult life. There is the peril also that the unenlightened child's mind may be poisoned by ignorant or vicious companions. After many years of research, I am convinced that a prudish upbringing of children of both sexes prepares the way for future irregularity in sexual conduct, the formation of an inveterate auto-erotic habit, the development of perverse impulses, unhappy wedlock, and several kinds of hysterical and neurotic disorders. The prudishly trained boy or girl is handicapped with a very bad start in life.

The true protection of the young is in knowledge, gradually acquired from the mother's knee, and through the whole period of education in childhood and youth. Ignorance is never an effective armament. We cannot keep the young mind shielded from every source of knowledge; they are too numerous. Moreover, counsels of

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