Outline a half-year 'Social Problems' course distributed in bi-weekly sessions over the four high school years, moving from basic facts to social aspects and eugenics¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 theoretical), q1 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The author recommends that high school students 'would take the keenest sort of interest in the larger social aspects of these questions' and proposes 'A half-year course in "Social Problems" could advantageously be outlined, to be distributed in bi-weekly sessions over the entire four years.' The course would start from facts imparted in the lower school, then treat prostitution and its control, the relation of licensed vice to municipal government and crime, a sociological study of the Lamarckian-Weismannian controversy, heredity-based treatment of delinquents and dependents, and end with an appreciation of eugenics and its field.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Builds on facts already imparted in the lower school
• Well-chosen readings from the available literature should be within reach of all who are interested

Constraints¶

• The author frames the content for high school students before the end of their course, not for elementary pupils

Target Learners¶

• high school students across all four years

Target Learning Goals¶

• understanding of venereal disease, prostitution, heredity and eugenics as social problems

Claims¶

• High school pupils are the peculiarly ripe starting point for sex instruction, and the appropriate lower grade limit should be established by starting at the top of the school and working down [+W]
• Imparting simple facts of sex is insufficient; instruction must be given in a vital, dynamic way by teachers who understand childhood and youth [+W]
• The school is the only organized agency that can assure sex instruction reaches all children, since the home and free literature cannot be relied upon [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Use indirect means—athletics, social affairs, literature, religion, and a lifework—to redirect the youth's instinctive energies alongside direct sex instruction.

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Cook, W. A. (1913). The problem of sex education. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 4(5), 253-260. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+problem+of+sex+education%22+Cook+1913