Well, the author, Emma Teitel, does make some good points that kids, regardless of how much their parents try to protect them or teach them the dangers of sex at home, they will get their sex-ed through their peers (& of course, internet), which will be far more dangerous, wrong, & unhelpful. Teaching it in class in a sterile environment can make it unattractive.
And enrolling kids in a Catholic or Islamic school won't help either, since those kids will still live among & socialize with kids who are watching porn, mainstream movies (even movies are quite sexually explicit now), sharing sexual pics, & using chatting apps to chat up with other gender & maybe even child predators etc.
There's no sex-ed in seemingly religiously conservative countries like Pakistan or UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi), but teens there know a lot about sex related stuff. Heck, making a boyfriend & girlfriend is not allowed, but does it stop anyone from enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love? After all, all those abandoned infants in garbage dumps & hospitals, & abortions (both legal & illegal), are not all legitimate kids but the consequences of a culture which is out of sync with the realities of the world around it.
Sweeping the problem under the carpet will only exacerbates the problem since it becomes more pleasurable because humans, & especially teens, have a tendency to do what they are not supposed to do. Something hidden & forbidden is much more pleasurable than the same thing out in the open.
Disclaimer: I am not entirely supportive of the new sex-ed curriculum because of only 1 point ... teaching my future kid that homosexuality is alright. Islam strictly forbids homosexuality & that's the only sticking point for me. Hence, it's Islamic school for my future kid. I, myself, don't care what people do in their bedrooms.
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... the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum ... includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting, cyberbullying and LGBT issues ... .
The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy.
Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality & same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist ... ). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, & oral & anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (& a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.
But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot & bothered; it makes her cringe.
Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”
This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral & unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.
And enrolling kids in a Catholic or Islamic school won't help either, since those kids will still live among & socialize with kids who are watching porn, mainstream movies (even movies are quite sexually explicit now), sharing sexual pics, & using chatting apps to chat up with other gender & maybe even child predators etc.
There's no sex-ed in seemingly religiously conservative countries like Pakistan or UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi), but teens there know a lot about sex related stuff. Heck, making a boyfriend & girlfriend is not allowed, but does it stop anyone from enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love? After all, all those abandoned infants in garbage dumps & hospitals, & abortions (both legal & illegal), are not all legitimate kids but the consequences of a culture which is out of sync with the realities of the world around it.
Sweeping the problem under the carpet will only exacerbates the problem since it becomes more pleasurable because humans, & especially teens, have a tendency to do what they are not supposed to do. Something hidden & forbidden is much more pleasurable than the same thing out in the open.
Disclaimer: I am not entirely supportive of the new sex-ed curriculum because of only 1 point ... teaching my future kid that homosexuality is alright. Islam strictly forbids homosexuality & that's the only sticking point for me. Hence, it's Islamic school for my future kid. I, myself, don't care what people do in their bedrooms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum ... includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting, cyberbullying and LGBT issues ... .
The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy.
Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality & same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist ... ). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, & oral & anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (& a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.
But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot & bothered; it makes her cringe.
Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”
This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral & unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.
