Rolling back sex ed is not good for children
The new Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford can now be accused of child endangerment.
You think that is too tough a statement?
Depriving our kids for even one school year of essential information to keep them sexually safe in a complex world can make children vulnerable to sexual abuse.
With the immediate repeal this week of one of the most widely consulted on and up to date sex-ed curriculums in Ontario history — implemented by the Wynne government in 2015 — Premier Doug Ford, as he promised, has bowed to a relatively small but extremely vocal minority, including the religious right.
When Ford won his majority last June, leading Canadian evangelist Charles McVety tweeted: “Praise God who heard our prayers and delivered victory for the sake of our children.”
With the astonishing announcement by Ford’s education minister Lisa Thompson that they’ve entered the wayback machine and reverted to the 1998 curriculum until the current one can be “swiftly” revised, the government delivered a dangerous and ignorant “victory” for the children in our lives.
You remember 1998? That was before marriage equality was the law of the land(2005) before sexting was a preteen let alone a teenage hobby, before Google, before social media, and before cyber bullying, slut shaming and homophobia were finally recognized as hatreds that could lead to teen violence, depression and suicide.
I cannot understand how any parent who wants their child to stay safe and healthy in what can be a sexually confusing and toxic climate can think that this retro step is acceptable.
As a parent who raised kids during the 1990’s I have always been grateful we didn’t have to deal with the overwhelming pressures of social media.
Imagine discovering your child has been induced to send an image of herself naked to another kid, who may then distribute it widely.
What parent wouldn’t want their child to learn in school as well as at home that this isn’t a safe practice?
We also weren’t as aware as we should have been about the one overarching concept that could keep our kids safe: that of healthy sexual consent.
Activist and sexual violence prevention educator Julie Lalonde responded to the government’s decision by tweeting what she said was the major takeaway among 92 Grade 8 girls in the Muskoka region after she led a seminar for half a day.
Every single girl, she said, wrote a version of “I can say NO!” on their feedback form. “Revoking the new curriculum denies them this vital, life-saving info,” tweeted Lalonde.
I ask again, what parent, even a very conservative one who wishes their child would abstain from sex until marriage, wouldn’t want their daughter or son to be empowered by detailed consent education?
I think we have to name what’s driving the most vociferous opposition to the “new” sex-ed curriculum. It’s homophobia.
Tanya Granic Allen, a single issue Conservative leadership candidate and fierce opponent of the revised curriculum essentially delivered the leadership to Doug Ford by rallying social conservatives around him.
We can only thank the internet for exposing her own feelings expressed in a video some time ago that an attempt to legalize same sex marriage in Croatia made her “want to vomit in disbelief.” Doug Ford eventually dropped her as a candidate. But obviously he has honoured her demand to repeal the modernized curriculum.
Opponents of it simply don’t understand that talking to kids about “gender fluidity” or same sex marriage at an age appropriate level doesn’t propel those who aren’t gay or gender fluid into being so — it keeps those who are LGBTQ safe in what used to be a hostile and highly unsafe world.
And again, I ask, what parent, grandparent or decent citizen does not just seek to keep their own children safe, but all children from harm, whether or not they conform to our own sexual values?
I listened to one mother praise the Ford government’s decision on CBC radio and was struck by her firm conviction that not only should parents be the primary ones to educate their children sexually (good luck with that) but they should have much more input than they already had — which was plenty — into a new sex-ed curriculum.
Why is it that sex-ed, which is really only a small component of physical education, be considered so different from science or history? We wouldn’t dream of allowing parents to decide how the public school system teaches these other subjects.
Giving children the correct names to their body parts, helping them understand their own biological development and the current social climate in which they live, is as essential as science or history.
Making sex the one subject that parents call the shots on is another way of making it shameful. And making sex shameful or secret exposes all children to the risk of abuse.
Of course parents must and should talk to their children about what they regard as healthy sexual values.
But it may be a far more daunting exercise than they realize. Most kids, unless you keep them in a popular culture and friend-free bubble, will not only be far ahead of their parents, they will be ahead of any sex-ed curriculum, updated or not, in knowledge, tolerance and — deal with it — sexual activity. So in that sense the children — perhaps lacking some key information — will lead the way.
Not quite the “victory” social conservatives imagined.
Twitter: @judithtimson