Adolescence

First published in 1917 during the upheaval of the Great War, this slender volume made a radical argument for its time: that adults must speak honestly with young people about sex and spirituality, or risk leaving them unprepared for life's dangers. Stephen Paget, a physician and former missionary, delivered these lectures to Oxford extension students as a manual for parents and teachers navigating the treacherous waters of adolescence. He argued that evasion and silence were not virtue but negligence, that curiosity about sex was natural and should be met with truth rather than embarrassment. Yet Paget was no radical: he grounded his advocacy in conservative values, urging that knowledge be paired with moral discipline and spiritual guidance. He championed the study of natural sciences as a counter to passions, extolled the stabilizing influence of home and siblings, and fretted over the societal expectations bearing down on young men during wartime. Reading this now feels like peering into a vanished world where such frankness was genuinely transgressive, where the simple act of answering a child's questions honestly required courage. It endures as a historical artifact of the first generation attempting to modernize attitudes toward sex education, flawed by modern standards but unmistakably forward-thinking for its moment.