by Valerie Huber
In order to influence the future of sex education, we must have a nuanced understanding of its colorful past.
It reads like fiction: an estimated 50 to 75 percent of American men were infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD); in thousands of families, an STD killed one, two, even five of their children; and an incredible 30 percent of all blindness was attributed to STDs. The transmission of STDs was an urgent concern of national health and security—so serious, in fact, that soldiers were court-martialed if they were found to be infected.
These statistics are not from a third-world country in the midst of the AIDs pandemic. These are estimates of syphilis and gonorrhea prevalence in 1904, during the Progressive Era of American history. This surprising STD epidemic is one indication that the “good old days” weren’t so good after all.
As American soldiers headed across the sea to fight World War I, they found themselves far away from the watchful eyes of family and free to enjoy what many thought was a male “sexual necessity.” Few know that the federal government first became interested in what happened in the bedroom, in part, as a matter of national security. Estimates suggest that half of all servicemen had an STD. These men could not dependably protect their fellow soldiers if they were stuck in a foxhole with advanced-stage syphilis.
Simply put, America was in the midst of a public health crisis in the early 1900s. And it was this crisis that sparked the birth of public sex education in America.
- The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same ...
- From the Roaring Twenties to the Kinsey Report ...
- The Sexual Revolution and the Growth of Sex Ed ...
- Risk Avoidance vs. Risk Reduction: Where Do We Go From Here? ...
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