... This is a grave question among our social questions, one which in this East we still leave to drift and waver, deceiving ourselves about it and burying it under a thick cloak of hypocrisy:
Is it permissible that the boy and the girl remain ignorant of sexual problems, and of the responsibility of directing their senses in this complicated, troubled life?
This is the question that "The Woman's Voice" poses today, for the great physicians and the great social thinkers to answer: — The Editors —
Dr. Mustafa Khalidi
We must speak to our children with simplicity, frankness, and truth about
sexual matters, because this subject is a delicate one, bound up most closely with their future lives — rather than leave doubt and suspicion in their souls. We must
Dr. Mustafa Khalidi
keep our children from drawing distorted, mistaken sexual information from bad companions and by other unpraiseworthy ways.
The sexual education of children must be suited to their age, and our success in conveying this information depends on the capability of the educator and his understanding of the subject. In my view it is advisable to explain to the child, in an easy and simple way, the reproductive life of man.
Arabic letters stand in urgent need of books for children on this subject.
Dr. Georges Hanna
To speak frankly with the boy and the girl about their sexual life and its developments is a very necessary thing. The sexual apparatus differs from the digestive apparatus and the respiratory and circulatory apparatus only in function. The functions of the body are bound up with one another, and functional independence simply does not exist.
The boy and the girl know that they have an eye to see with, an ear to hear with, and a stomach to digest their food; but they know nothing
Dr. Georges Hanna
of their sexual life. And if the boy, with the social and educational advantages he enjoys, especially in the East, does grasp the nature of his sexual organs — a grasp deprived of sound practical guidance — that is not the case with the girl. And this grasp in the boy is no less dangerous than the absence of it in the girl. How often have tragic incidents occurred through the meeting of this waywardness on one side with total ignorance on the other.
The age of adolescence is the most dangerous period of life. The boy at this age reaches the threshold of manhood, and the girl is taken by surprise by the phenomenon of "menstruation." Health duty and social duty alike require that the two of them be enlightened about
the organic and functional changes that will come over them, so that these surprises do not shock them and leave upon their bodily and psychological life a mark hard to cure and whose dangers are hard to escape. For this reason I insist on the necessity of sexual instruction for students of both sexes in the schools, at the hands of male and female teachers competent in learning and in character. And I hope this subject will be taken up in earnest and given due consideration.
Dr. Nihad Jureidini
Man came into being distinguished by nature with a love of learning, of inquiring, and of solving the things that seem obscure to him. This thirst appears at its plainest in the child: you see him begin his life by getting to know everything around him with every power given to him. And the child has a special inclination to learn about sexual questions; any guidance that does not take account of this inclination is corrupt guidance.
Sexual education among us has been greatly neglected — indeed it has been distorted in a way of which the least that can be said is that it is misleading, so that inquiry into it has become a forbidden thing. I still remember a mother who was bathing her little daughter while her son, who had not passed his third year, stood close by. No sooner did his eyes fall upon his little sister than astonishment seized him, and he began questioning his mother about the differences he had discovered. The mother did nothing but scold him and drive him away; the child suffered a painful shock and searched in vain for the sin he