Are the public schools OK?
I had an interesting encounter in a coffeeshop today. I was enjoying the 19th-century part of Orlando and an overly-sugary fruit smoothie when a man approached me, asking if he could ask me some questions.
It came out that he chose me to ask because I looked like I was still in public school (my youth isn’t over yet, but I didn’t think I looked quite that young). He had a thick eastern european accent, and had recently moved to Canada.
“The public schools…are they OK,” he asked, “or should I put my kids in private school?” I assured him that the Canadian public school system is pretty decent. He shook his head and continued: “but what I want to know is, do they teach moral values?” I was confused and wondered about what he meant. They did teach me to share and play nice as a youngster.
Eventually it came out that what he was worried about was sexual education. He wanted to know the specifics of what was taught. “I don’t want them to learn that kids having sex is OK,” he continued.
My instinct at the time was that the program was probably a bit too liberal for his taste, and I think that a liberal sexual education program is a very good thing. I firmly believe that old-fashioned notions of the virtues of purity versus the sinfulness of sex are deeply sexist, repressive, and unlikely to lead to health and happiness. At the same time, I respect the right of parents to bring up their children within a certain value system, and I had no desire to engage him in argument. At this point I pulled a cop-out, saying that it had been a while since I’d taken any sex-ed in school (and that in a different province) and that he’d be better off asking a teacher or the school board about the specifics of the curriculum.
I continued to wonder afterwards how old his children were and what his worst fears about the program looked like. Was he conservative enough to balk at anything other than abstinence-only? Or was he worried that the program would tell his children something along the lines of “sex is lots of fun and everyone should be having it. Here’s how to perform a blowjob”?
I also wondered what is being taught in sex-ed these days, since the last time I encountered it was in 1996. I have a tough time differentiating between the stuff I was taught in school and the stuff that was in all the sex-ed books that my mother left on my bed at age 8. I learned about “the birds and the bees” from one of those books long before I encountered it in the classroom.
I also remember one video shown in school that stated, without equivocation, that homosexuality was both common and completely normal. That would have been a fairly controversial statement in relatively conservative Alberta, but it passed without comment in the classroom. However, when the teacher was asked via the anonymous question box how homosexuals have sex, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “your imagination is as good as mine.”
We learned that there are other sexual activities besides penis-in-vagina intercourse and memorized the definition of masturbation, but didn’t learn what an orgasm was. The clitoris was just a lump on an anatomy diagram, a diagram that the teacher apologized for having to hand out (”I apologize, girls…this one is very rude”).
Curious as to whether the curriculum now teaches that kids having sex is OK, I took a look at the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education. The following objectives appear:
“affirm that sexual feelings are a natural part of human life”;
“integrate the positive, life-enhancing and rewarding aspects of human sexuality while also seeking to reduce and prevent sexual health problems”
“[help students learn to] integrate sexuality into mutually satisfying relationships”
“sensitively address and resolve conflict that may arise as a result of differing values and beliefs surrounding sexual health and sexuality”
So, it would appear to be generally forward-thinking and pro-sex, which I am fully in favour of, but also find myself wondering where the gaps might be.
I also wonder if that man would have approached me if he’d seen I was reading a book with a naked woman on the cover.
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