Education: Books v. Tunnel

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Between adjoining South Philadelphia High School for Boys and South Philadelphia High School for Girls is a dim, twisting tunnel. Last year a member of the Philadelphia Board of Education informed the board that in its secluded places went on "things that are not proper." The principal of the girls' school, concerned about this ''ugly proof that the school was not providing a complete education, sent for the commission's books. Soon a great hubbub was raised among citizens who thought that the books, if given the children, would be worse than the tunnel. Psychiatrist Alfred Gordon bellowed that sex instruction in the schools would fill young brains with "notions of a most serious character," bring on an exchange of views and "distortion,'' lead to "perversion . . . and neurotic disturbances." The tall, grizzled, dictatorial Superintendent of Schools, Edwin Cornelius Broome, himself the author of four textbooks dealing with sex "in a properly delicate way," snapped: "The course has not been approved. No action will be taken upon it until it has been fully studied."

In Manhattan, plump Dr. Keliher, chairman of the commission, quickly retorted: "It is the distortions in young minds indicated by the questions they asked that we hope to straighten out by presenting in an honest and medically accurate way the answers to their inevitable questions. We insist these questions be answered in the proper context of the whole story of life and growth."

Progressive Educator Keliher has been hearing those questions since, at the age of 20, she began to teach in Washington's (D. C.) elementary schools 14 years ago. After studying primary education in Europe, she became an instructor at Yale's Institute of Human Relations (1930-33), then supervisor of elementary schools in Hartford, Conn. (1933-35). Since then, as chairman of the Commission on Human Relations, she has gone about the country (flying 20,000 mi.) asking young people questions and answering theirs. A girl asks how to lose 15 Ib. Another wants to know whether intelligence tests are accurate, for "if they are I shall not go to college or care what becomes of me." Others: Am I normal? What is death? Why is a baby red when it is born? Is sex love? Is it true that repressed people who have no sex experiences cannot paint, or write, or act? What happens when you pet a lot?