Most of the sex manuals for boys touch on masturbation, sometimes exaggerating its dangers; such exaggeration should be avoided, for it leads to far worse evils than those it attempts to prevent.

It seems undesirable that any warnings about masturbation should form part of school instruction, unless under very special circumstances.
The sexual instruction imparted in the school on sexual as on other subjects should be absolutely impersonal and objective.
At this point we approach one of the difficulties in the way of sexual enlightenment: the ignorance or unwisdom of the would-be teachers.

This difficulty at present exists both in the home and the school, while it destroys the value of many manuals written for the sexual instruction of the young.

The mother, who ought to be the child's confidant and guide in matters of sexual education, and could naturally be so if left to her own healthy instincts, has usually been brought up in false traditions which it requires a high degree of intelligence and character to escape from; the school-teacher, even if only called upon to give instruction in natural history, is oppressed by the same traditions, and by false shame concerning the whole subject of sex; the writer of manuals on sex has often only freed himself from these bonds in order to advocate dogmatic, unscientific, and sometimes mischievous opinions which have been evolved in entire ignorance of the real facts.

As Moll says (Das _Sexualleben des Kindes_, p.