The provincial government recently implemented an updated sex education curriculum for elementary and high school boards across Ontario.
The current sex-ed curriculm dates back to 1998, and doesn’t mention anything about LGBT and transgender issues, sexting, gender identity, oral or anal sex, masturbation, or the idea of consent. The updated version will include all these things.
There are some parents who have problems with this.
A few hundred of them gathered at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Feb. 24 to protest, claiming this new curriculum is “explicit,” “radical,” and will “sexualize children,” according to the event page on the Campaign Life Coalition website, a conservative-Christian pro-life group that organized the event.
Their patronizing fear that consent-based education will encourage kids to have more sex or sex at an earlier age is ludicrous at best, and not supported by empirical evidence.
A recent meta-analysis of 174 studies conducted between 1989-2003 on the impact of sexual health promotion intervention on youth found that education has no effect on the participants’ number of sexual occasions or number of sexual partners they have.
Critics argue the new programming will “steal children’s innocence,” but protecting your children’s innocence is simply not realistic. They hear stuff on the playground. They see sexual magazine covers in the grocery store. They hear the songs on the radio. They watch the ads on TV, and the Internet contains a myriad of sex-related content that they can watch, read, or even create. It’s undeniable that sex and sexuality is all around them.
Kids shouldn’t have to be left to their own devices when it comes to sex.
Educated professionals should teach them in a safe school environment that it is okay to identify or be attracted to another gender; that safe, consensual, and protected sex is a completely normal and positive thing; and that it is okay to be curious about and explore their own bodies.
By shielding them from the inevitable, they will discover all of this themselves, and with the easy access to questionable content on the Internet, this could potentially be harmful. Would you rather your child learn about masturbation in an environment that also teaches about respect and safety, or through watching illegal, degrading porn online?
What if a child has two moms or two dads and they are taught at school that “marriage is only between a man and a woman,” like I was? This kind of close-minded education is bound to cause the child to feel like their parent’s love is somehow illegitimate and wrong, which is beyond harmful.
It is obvious that a lack of proper sex education can have detrimental effects, seeing as we live in a society where victims of rape are often still too afraid to speak up, transgender people are often suicidal or depressed due to lack of support and resources, and politicians have claimed the female body has a natural ability to defend against rape.
This new curriculum is not a propaganda tool proposed by left-wing hippies to encourage sexual activity. There is a section that focuses on abstinence and delaying sex.
In essence, the curriculum encourages independent thinking and decision-making. It simply gives students sufficient information so they can make their own safe and healthy choices.
—Martina Babiakova
second-year journalism
