Over the last few weeks in Ontario there have been an awful
lot of students missing time from school.
They’re not ill and they’re not playing hooky; quite the contrary. They
are missing school with the full support of their parents because of the
unspeakable situation that has developed with a new part of the Ontario
education curriculum.
They’re actually teaching kids about sex. How terrible.
The new curriculum is moving beyond ‘boys have a penis and girls have a vagina’ and into more topics that are relevant to our culture today like homosexuality, identifying exploitative behaviors, gender identity, and many other subjects that are front and center to this generation. It should come as no surprise to anyone, though, that this is not being well received by many parents who believe that there is no place for this kind of sexual education in the school system.
I wonder if these are the same kinds of parents who would turn the car keys over to an eager 16 year old who hasn’t had one driving lesson. Sending a teenager out into the world without a firm grasp on their sexuality is just like putting an unlicensed driver behind the wheel of a high performance sports car – it’s a disaster just waiting to happen.
For whatever reasons, some people believe that sexual education should consist solely of telling your kids that sex is something they shouldn ‘t do until they’re married. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, and something you should just completely avoid until you find the man or woman of your dreams and you make time for it every Tuesday in your home with the lights off. That’s all well and good to preach that, but it’s not reality. If you disagree, you obviously don’t remember what it was like to be a teenager.
Around the time of my thirteenth birthday, I became a monster fueled by hormones and constantly distracted by what was happening to my body and mind as it pertained to the ladies. I knew only two things about the opposite sex: I liked girls and I had an overpowering desire to touch one. Aside from a rudimentary pamphlet with drawings of the reproductive organs that we were given in sixth grade, I didn’t have a clue about sexuality. My only sexual education came from a pile of dirty magazines my friends and I found in the woods and, as you can imagine, our ideas of what sex was all about were hilarious at best and potentially destructive at worst.
The only teacher who had the courage to speak to us frankly about sexuality was my eighth grade health teacher, and he was practically run out of town on a rail. We were a bunch of kids hopped up on hormones with no knowledge of safe sex techniques or sexual health of any type – so it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that our little corner of the world had some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Canada. You know it’s bad when they make a movie poking fun at the fact (check out New Waterford Girl for a great piece of Canadiana). It’s a miracle I wasn’t a father at 16.
That was over 25 years ago, and even though our society is almost unrecognizable from those days, some people’s attitudes toward sex haven’t changed one iota. There are cultural and religious factors at play in why some parents don’t want their kids learning about sex, and there are some parents who just don’t know how to or can’t be bothered to talk to their kids about it. Instead of arming them with the knowledge they need to navigate the sticky world of sexuality, abstinence is promoted and sexual shaming is used as a weapon to try and make sure that our kids are ignoring every cue their bodies are screaming at them. Good luck with that approach, folks.
My boys are seven and three, and we have been teaching them about sexuality from the moment they have been able to start questioning about it. They know all the proper terms for their parts, they know where babies come from, and they know that not all boys like girls and not all girls like boys. It’s a pretty good starter kit, we think, but it’s the kind of information that many Ontario parents think should be strictly off limits. Knowledge is power, and some are rendering Ontario children impotent to deal with the issue of their sexuality.
Luckily, many parents are showing support for the initiative and other provinces, for the most part, are worlds ahead of Ontario as far as what they’re teaching in school curriculums about sex education. The fact is, though, that parents should be the prime educators of their children – not just in sex ed, but everything under the sun. It saddens me that the parents who are keeping their children home from school because of sexual education classes are sending a very dangerous message about how they want their children to go forth in the world.
“You are not to learn about anything I don’t agree with!”
Those parents don’t want vibrant, independent thinkers. They want smaller versions of themselves that will continue with their lives; regurgitating the same outdated ideas and principles of their parents. That’s just what we want – another generation of people screwing things up like we did.
The birds and the bees won’t bring down modern civilization. It’s about time we brought all our kids into the loop, before we have a whole bunch of extra kids to deal with.
They’re actually teaching kids about sex. How terrible.
The new curriculum is moving beyond ‘boys have a penis and girls have a vagina’ and into more topics that are relevant to our culture today like homosexuality, identifying exploitative behaviors, gender identity, and many other subjects that are front and center to this generation. It should come as no surprise to anyone, though, that this is not being well received by many parents who believe that there is no place for this kind of sexual education in the school system.
I wonder if these are the same kinds of parents who would turn the car keys over to an eager 16 year old who hasn’t had one driving lesson. Sending a teenager out into the world without a firm grasp on their sexuality is just like putting an unlicensed driver behind the wheel of a high performance sports car – it’s a disaster just waiting to happen.
For whatever reasons, some people believe that sexual education should consist solely of telling your kids that sex is something they shouldn ‘t do until they’re married. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, and something you should just completely avoid until you find the man or woman of your dreams and you make time for it every Tuesday in your home with the lights off. That’s all well and good to preach that, but it’s not reality. If you disagree, you obviously don’t remember what it was like to be a teenager.
Around the time of my thirteenth birthday, I became a monster fueled by hormones and constantly distracted by what was happening to my body and mind as it pertained to the ladies. I knew only two things about the opposite sex: I liked girls and I had an overpowering desire to touch one. Aside from a rudimentary pamphlet with drawings of the reproductive organs that we were given in sixth grade, I didn’t have a clue about sexuality. My only sexual education came from a pile of dirty magazines my friends and I found in the woods and, as you can imagine, our ideas of what sex was all about were hilarious at best and potentially destructive at worst.
The only teacher who had the courage to speak to us frankly about sexuality was my eighth grade health teacher, and he was practically run out of town on a rail. We were a bunch of kids hopped up on hormones with no knowledge of safe sex techniques or sexual health of any type – so it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that our little corner of the world had some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Canada. You know it’s bad when they make a movie poking fun at the fact (check out New Waterford Girl for a great piece of Canadiana). It’s a miracle I wasn’t a father at 16.
That was over 25 years ago, and even though our society is almost unrecognizable from those days, some people’s attitudes toward sex haven’t changed one iota. There are cultural and religious factors at play in why some parents don’t want their kids learning about sex, and there are some parents who just don’t know how to or can’t be bothered to talk to their kids about it. Instead of arming them with the knowledge they need to navigate the sticky world of sexuality, abstinence is promoted and sexual shaming is used as a weapon to try and make sure that our kids are ignoring every cue their bodies are screaming at them. Good luck with that approach, folks.
My boys are seven and three, and we have been teaching them about sexuality from the moment they have been able to start questioning about it. They know all the proper terms for their parts, they know where babies come from, and they know that not all boys like girls and not all girls like boys. It’s a pretty good starter kit, we think, but it’s the kind of information that many Ontario parents think should be strictly off limits. Knowledge is power, and some are rendering Ontario children impotent to deal with the issue of their sexuality.
Luckily, many parents are showing support for the initiative and other provinces, for the most part, are worlds ahead of Ontario as far as what they’re teaching in school curriculums about sex education. The fact is, though, that parents should be the prime educators of their children – not just in sex ed, but everything under the sun. It saddens me that the parents who are keeping their children home from school because of sexual education classes are sending a very dangerous message about how they want their children to go forth in the world.
“You are not to learn about anything I don’t agree with!”
Those parents don’t want vibrant, independent thinkers. They want smaller versions of themselves that will continue with their lives; regurgitating the same outdated ideas and principles of their parents. That’s just what we want – another generation of people screwing things up like we did.
The birds and the bees won’t bring down modern civilization. It’s about time we brought all our kids into the loop, before we have a whole bunch of extra kids to deal with.
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