Sex Education Is Desirable [1951]

This paper comprises Russell’s answers to six questions about sex education put to him by Jean Dauven of France’s popular scientific monthly, Science et vie. Having solicited the opinions of French physicians, educators and intellectuals, Dauven felt the need for “a non-Latin approach of the problem” (10 Aug. 1951). Russell’s responses appeared in translation in a survey article entitled “L’Éducation sexuelle est souhaitable”, 80 (Nov. 1951): 303 (B&R C51.39). He had previously examined the topic at length in his two books about education (1926, 167–76, 1932, 117–30), as well as in Marriage and Morals (1929, 77–95). Not only was ignorance about sex intrinsically bad, Russell repeatedly maintained, but the deliberate obfuscation of the relevant facts was harmful to children in other ways:

It should be one of the fundamental principles of any sound ethic that all knowledge is good, and that to this no exception whatever can be admitted. The child who finds that his natural curiosity in certain directions is met with frowns and rebuffs learns to suppose that knowledge is good when it is uninteresting, but bad when it is interesting. (1932, 120)