The Pittsburgh Press (December 13, 1946)
Ferguson: Family-life training
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Sex delinquency is a major social problem. It is also a factor in present high divorce rates, so there is constant agitation for sex education among growing children. How best can it be given?
Dr. Benjamin Gruenberg hands out an important “don’t” in an article on the subject. “Don’t,” he says, “set up sex education as a course. For sex is not a subject like history or arithmetic. It is an integral fact of life that bears upon everything we do. Boys and girls need guidance, counsel and orientation more than technical information.”
Perhaps if we talked about education for family life and less about sex, we would get along faster.
Public school teachers probably have the best opportunity to give that sort of instruction. Dr. Eva Dodge of Little Rock, Ark., a leader in the family welfare field, says Mississippi is making remarkable progress in training children for family life.
She says a teacher of third-grade arithmetic goes about it this way: She selects a pupil and asks how much his father earns a week. The class is told to calculate the monthly and yearly income.
Next, the teacher asks the boy what his mother earns. “Nothing,” he answers. “She just stays home and keeps house.”
Well, says the teacher, “Suppose mother gets sick and you hired someone to do her work.” Then the class is set to figuring the average wage for day work and laundry.
Sometimes it is found that Mother “earns” as much or more than Father.