Sexual, eugenics and moral education in the thought of Paulina Luisi. The experience of the chair of Social Hygiene (Uruguay, 1926-1930)

Abstract

The object of this article is the conception of sexual education developed by the first Uruguayan doctor Paulina Luisi, one of the pioneers in the Río de La Plata to assume relevance and guide certain principles around sexual education. To do this, we are interested in focusing on his Chair of Social Hygiene (1926-1930) for students of the Normal schools, a curricular experience that meant being one of the first attempts to institutionalize sex education in normalist teacher education. We will investigate how sexuality and its problems were expressed in Luisi’s pedagogical discourse, covering the moral, pedagogical and scientific foundations that supported his proposal. The article, inscribed in the field of the History of Education, particularly in the History of sex education, advances with a qualitative analysis from various sources such as “Some Ideas on Eugenia” (1916), Plan and Methods of Sexual Teaching (1919), “A Better Offspring” (1919), Essay on Biological-Eugenic Teaching (1921, 1923), A Chair in Social Hygiene (1950). Under the readings of these writings, we intend to make visible the theoretical foundations of the moral norms that Luisi tried to define sexuality and the most appropriate means for its formation, in articulation with the eugenic ideas that stained much of medical and social thought at the beginning of the 20th century. The sexual education proposed by Luisi had as its objective the “control of the instincts” and the formation of an “informed and responsible intelligence” towards the offspring (genetic responsibility); a sexual education also articulated to the prevention of the venereal diseases contagion and in the generation of healthy descendants that would allow the improvement of the race. In his projection, he imagined sexual education at all levels of education in public education, proposing a relevant role to families and teachers. He questioned the positions that opted for the silencing of issues related to sexuality to children and youth, and. As will be noted in his Chair experience, his curricular and methodological commitment sought to place sexuality and its problems in the pedagogical-political debate, a pedagogical essay that linked science, morals and eugenics.