LETTRE

Access to porn, yes; to sex-education, no?

 

In the age of 24/7 access to anonymous disinformation on the internet and social media, Ontario’s education system absolutely cannot regress to a past where children were in the dark about sex and their own sexual health. I was in 9th grade in 1998. My high school’s so-called “curriculum” for that time was seriously out of date even then. The two stigmatizing educational videos I recall watching, one about date rape and one about domestic violence, looked to have been created years earlier. The attitude towards harassment (sexual and otherwise), and LGBTQ issues expressed from a few of my high school teachers at the time, was that 100% of the answers to those issues should be up to the parents, with no involvement from them. Then, and now.

In 1998, the subjects of consent, internet predators, cyber-bullying, sexting, gender equality/identity, body image, LGBTQ, and self-esteem, among others, were completely absent from my own sex ed curriculum. Times have changed. Teachers and children have changed. Education, not disinformation, is what children really need.

How children treat each other is learned through the adults in their lives. The thousands of parents, teachers, social workers and counsellors who are regularly involved in children’s well-being were involved in the design of the current fact-based sex ed curriculum that Premier Ford wants to take away -- without any viable replacement.

Taking away this crucial curriculum, in the age we live in now, would be on par with elimination of any fact-based subject from the education of our children. Whatever “morality” points that religious conservatives may gain from this disastrous act will be paid for, in full, by our children for years to come.

Amy Oakley, Ottawa