Stick to your sex-ed guns, Quebec

Re Quebec tests mandatory, all-grades sex-ed project, Aug. 31 While some people will undoubtedly be up in arms over this, we should look at what other “religious beliefs” could exempt students from some classes. For example:

For a long time Christians opposed the concept of infinity. Only God was infinite; yet one cannot imagine modern mathematics without it.

According to Christian thought, vacuums couldn’t exist because God was everywhere. How would electronics have developed without vacuum tubes?

Christians accepted the idea that world was flat because the Bible says it is. Now imagine teaching geography that way.

The Bible is clear that the world is about 6,000 years old. Yet one cannot teach meaningful geology without shattering that notion.

The book of Genesis tells us explicitly that humans are a separate creation yet biology makes no sense if that were true.

The Bible clearly states many times that the Earth does not move but astronomy tells us that it does.

If our schools pander to discredited beliefs in one area, why not in others? If teachers are not properly trained in the topic, train them. And if parents want to pull their children from schools, make it a mandatory part of private curricula the way other subjects are. Parents may have the right to instruct their children in the religion of their choice but they are rarely equipped to teach children any part of a modern curriculum let alone one so intimate as human sexuality. How many more young people need to die from the bullying that ignorance of this topic seems to engender? How many more children need to suffer sexual abuse because they aren’t taught that the perpetrators are sick?

I suspect the vast majority of parents are quite happy to hand this topic over to people trained to teach it. Quebec should not back down to people who want to keep their children in the dark. Gary Dale, West Hill, Ont.