The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

July, 1927 The Health Bulletin 31
^^^E older ones, however, have scarcely understood; our children
have asked us for facts and we have given them fiction ; they
have asked for " do " and we have given them " don't "
; they
have asked their noble source, and we have told them of doctor's
satchels, Sears-Roebuck orders, or have spun the " Alade in
Germany " story of the stork. We have rebuked them for their
innocent questions until they no longer ask them, but blunder
through the formative years of life like a thousand ancestors who
have gone the same way making countless costly
errors and occasionally finding the light.
How discouraged Nature must get in her
search for teachers in her school! She has
begged and implored parents to take the position,
but mostly they have been deaf—and dumb.
She has suggested to the school teachers and the
preachers that she would like their help, but they
have held up righteous hands and supposedly
empty minds claiming that they knew nothing
at all of such base things ; they have been too busy teaching humdrum
to find time to set the boys and girls right on vital matters.
Yet the children must be taught somehow, since it is impossible
that they can grow to be men and women and not know how the
race is reproduced. So Na^.ure has been compelled to use the
eagerly proffered services of older boys and girls (themselves
needing wholesome instruction), of perverts, and of libertines.
For a school house she is compelled to use the alley, the hay mow,
the deserted house, the vacant lot or garage ; for text books she
has obscene magazines, vulgar
stories,
quack medical literature,
and lewd pictures. A FINE
SCFIOOL INDEED!
And yet these same children
going to Nature's school in the
alley have been asking that they
be taught these vital matters at
home at their parent's knee.
Hozv dare zee risk the ruin of
their health and perhaps their precious lives by leaving them in
ignorance when they are asking us for the truth
BOYS, all boys except the very depraved ones, if there be
such, will thrill to the theme of glorious manhood—hard fighting,
clean-living manhood. They are asking us for the food that will
make men of boys, and we are giving them trash and lies. Their
better-selves are being starved.