Few questions are as explosive as what to teach children about sex.
Quebec has dodged that minefield by not having any sex education at all for the better part of the last decade, as Google, YouTube and Facebook have come to replace teachers and school nurses.
Ontario’s experience, on the other hand, shows just how political the issue can get.
Under Conservative premier Mike Harris (1995-2002), the curriculum was reformed and teachers were told to inform parents about the content of classes, and allow their children to opt out.
Students learned little more than human anatomy before Grade 7, when they were taught how STIs are transmitted, what the term “abstinence” means and how it applies to “healthy sexuality.”
Grade 8 sex education saw a heavy emphasis placed on abstinence, as it was throughout the Bible Belt of the United States, where abstinence-only sex education received ample federal funding.
Enter Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty. His 2010 reform, part of the new Physical and Health Education curriculum, would have taught children the real names of genitalia as early as Grade 1, and begun discussions about sexual orientation as early as Grade 3 — had it been implemented.
Based on a two-year consultation, it stated that teachers “should” inform parents about course content, and that parents could opt out of certain classes. But even Catholic schools would have had to teach the course.
By Grade 5, students would learn about their changing bodies and feelings — and how those feelings can conflict with cultural teachings.
In Grade 6, classes would discuss gender stereotyping, homophobia and wet dreams. Masturbation would be described as a normal, and pleasurable, thing to do.
Grade 7 placed a similar emphasis on abstinence and STIs as the Harris curriculum, but the lesson plan also covered anal and oral sex. And it also, crucially, looked at how technology affects sexuality, and vice versa, bringing the curriculum into the 21st century with discussions of online bullying and sexting, amid other phenomena.
Finally Grade 8 looked into the gamut of gender identities, including transgender, transsexual, intersex and two-spirited.
The curriculum was short-lived, however. It met with a huge backlash from religious leaders and parents who thought it too “radical”, while Sun News dubbed it McGuinty’s “gay education” curriculum, and pointed to the influence of Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s openly gay education minister for the five years leading up to 2010 — and currently the province’s premier.
Within three days of being made public, McGuinty’s curriculum was withdrawn, and watered down to resemble the status quo, with scant mention of “homophobia” or “gender identity.”
In Quebec, the revamp of sex education never even got that far. Line Beauchamp (Liberal education minister from 2010 to 2012) promised to reintroduce mandatory teaching on sex education, after receiving a petition of 7,000 signatures. But it never materialized before she left her post, a casualty of the student strikes in 2012.
On the ground, nurse Maria di Matteo, who works at two schools in Montreal North, says there has been little negative reaction to her efforts, which include giving class presentations, handing out condoms, prescribing birth control, and sometimes telling girls where best to hide it from their parents.
The idea that teaching kids about sex will encourage them to have it is not backed up by experience, she says. We teach calculus, but students don’t run off and do it.
And it’s dangerous.
“The statistics show that infection rates keep rising and that the information is not getting passed on, or kids are not retaining it,” Di Matteo says.
“I tell parents, ‘We’re not promoting sex, we’re just advising students so they can make the right choices.’ Parents forget they were teenagers, too. We can’t keep our eyes closed anymore, or infection rates will just keep rising.”