United States Public Health Service. High Schools and Sex Education: A Manual of Suggestions on Education Related to Sex. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922.

pp. 98. Bound in red publisher's cloth with gilt title and date on cover and spine. Bottom right hand corner on front and back is significantly bumped. Cracked front hinges. Property of West Point Children's School bookplate with drawing of West Point as image; stamp from Department of Military Hygiene West Point, NY. Overall FAIR

What happens when the state decides to teach desire? Issued by the U.S. Public Health Service after World War I, this manual represents one of the earliest coordinated federal efforts to shape American sex ed. Framed not as titillation but as hygiene, discipline, and civic responsibility, the volume folds sexuality into the language of public health, moral character, and national efficiency. Here, reproduction becomes biology; desire becomes risk; and adolescence becomes a site of administrative concern. A revealing artifact of the Social Hygiene movement during the Progressive Era, this work marks the moment when sexuality in the modern West was formalized in classrooms—regulated, medicalized, and rendered a matter of policy. In the history of “sexthics,” it stands as a reminder that what is deemed “sexy” is often first defined by what is deemed dangerous.

This example is particularly interesting for its connection to West Point.