The View From Bathurst St.

April 26, 2010, 10:47 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

Sex Education. Yes. I am going there.

I’ve tried to be gracious and understanding when people have expressed their frustrations with the McGuinty government’s sex education curriculum for Ontario schools. I am actually disappointed that the new curriculum document will not be used in the 2010-2011 school year. If you have been living under a rock for the last little while, I suggest you take a little interweb search and read up on the proposal that has now been ‘shelved’.

My personal beef with the many people that have been protesting this new curriculum is that the only thing they are stopping is children learning about important, real life things. By sheltering kids from learning about sex we presenting children with one of the two following views: a) “sex is bad, if I ever desire to have sex (outside of marriage) I must be a bad person and I must never talk about this with anyone” or b) “no one will talk about this sex thing so I am going to rebel and put myself in potentially dangerous situations. I might be exaggerating a bit and being a small drama llama- but I do this to show you the issue of avoid discussing difficult topics.

Now. I have also heard “well, they are teaching about homosexuality and gender identity at the grade three level. This is such a young age to learn about such things”. This statement makes me crazy. I’m not going to go into the whole debate surrounding the ‘morality’ of homosexuality. If you are a decent human being, and especially if you proclaim to be a Christ follower, you should be loving and accepting of all people no matter their sexual orientation- It doesn’t matter what you believe is ‘sin’ or not. I refer you back to the passage where we learn to take the plank out of our own eyes before we try to take the speck of dust out of our brothers. So what is so wrong about learning that Heather has Two Mommies, if it teaches children that not everyone has the exact same life as them. Don’t we live in a society that celebrates diversity?

My point on this issue? Objectively teach kids about the things going on in the world and they can form their own opinions based on what they have learned from school, their family values and their faith. By avoiding the difficult topics we create an unnecessary fear surrounding the topics of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. As children become older, this fear has the potential to grow into more fear, judgement and hate. I’m pretty sure that these are not three things that we are called to do.

I have so much more to say on the matter, but I feel I might have said enough for this day.