In 2015, the Canadian province of Ontario decided to take a bold approach to sexual education—one that went way beyond the birds and the bees. The new curriculum didn’t shy away from sensitive topics like consent and sexuality. Kids as young as eight learned about same-sex families and the concept of gender identity. Twelve-year-old kids talked about how anal sex could lead to contracting a sexually transmitted infection, while 14-year-olds learned about sexting.
But all that frank talk about sex may not be around for much longer. Ontario’s current conservative premier, Doug Ford, who is known as “Canada’s Donald Trump,” has pledged to roll back the measures put in place by his predecessor, liberal premier Kathleen Wynne.
This repeal puts children and youth in danger,” says Roza Nozari, who leads We Have Your Back Ontario, a campaign aimed at preserving Ontario’s progressive curriculum. “What concerns me is that we’re taking out … the piece around gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation … when we remove it, we get this very different message, that says we actually don’t support you, and you don’t belong here, unless the parents we consult with approve.”
The tug-of-war over sex ed is not unique to Ontario. It’s been a source of contention in the US culture wars ever since the first organized sex-ed program emerged in Chicago in 1913. (The Catholic Church promptly declared the program immoral.) Today, as Bonnie J. Rough writes in The Atlantic, abstinence-only education is increasingly popular in the states—in stark contrast to the Netherlands, where children learn about everything from sexual diversity and contraceptive use.
As cultural norms around sexuality evolve, it’s become increasingly clear that children, left to their own devices, will inevitably encounter issues related to consent, gender identity, and sexual preference as they grow up. And so a growing movement is pushing for comprehensive sex education, which provides kids with “age-appropriate, medically accurate information on a broad set of topics related to sexuality, including human development, relationships, decision-making, abstinence, contraception, and disease prevention.”
Some parents may be hesitant to expose their children to this type of sex ed, whether for religious reasons or a simple desire to preserve their innocence. But research suggests that the more information kids have about sex, the better-off they’ll be—particularly for young people who might otherwise feel marginalized in mainstream society.
