Sex Education

Ontario has been catching some slack from certain members of society and certain parents lately for introducing a new sex education curriculum for all schools to better educate their children. Within the old curriculum from 1998, in grade 1, children would learn the major body parts, grade 4 they would learn stages of human development and in grade 8 (which is the most they would be learning) they would explain abstinence and consequences of having sex. With the new curriculum that was made in 2010, children in grade 1 would learn to identify body parts (penis, tesiticles, vagina, etc.), grade 4 they would learn about the changes during puberty and what goes a long with it (gender identity and sexual orientation) and in grade 8 they would learn about what affects decision about sex (curiosity, religious beliefs, etc) and understanding gender identity. 

I think this new sex education curriculum is great for todays day and age. They bring up very important things like sexual orientation and homosexuality; they talk about how some parents are composed of 2 moms/2 dads or a mom and a dad. They teach them about being emotionally ready for sex and they also teach them about protection from getting pregnant, and sexually transmitted diseases. With this new education on sex I think it could have the potential to cut down the percentage of teenage girls who have been getting pregnant, and could also cut down bullying on people who are gay; everyone will learn at a young age that people are different and have different sexual identities/orientations so there would be no need to bully anyone for that matter.

In the southern states, sexual education is a completely different matter: they believe that abstinence should be the only thing that’s taught in schools about sex. There is even a bill in Tennessee that condones “gateway sexual behaviors” which can include hugging or holding hands (because supposedly these behaviors can lead to sex). Teachers who choose to teach their students about sex can be sued and/or fired from their job. With this curriculum they believe that by not teaching children and young adults about sex they will not end up having sex until marriage, therefore there will be less teen pregnancy and less sexually transmitteddiseases. 

This is the complete opposite that happens actually, places like New Mexico and Mississippi who don’t teach any type of sexual education have the highest rates of teen pregnancies. 

            I think the reason that the southern states in particular are pushing for abstinence only education is because they’re stuck in their old-school ways: they were raised at a different time and different things in the world were going. They have a completely different ideology from todays society: they believe that children should not be taught about sex in school, they believe that they should remain abstinent and they also condone homosexuality and believe that marriage and love should only be between a man and a women, they are stuck at a certain point in history and refuse to move on and accept what’s happening in our world so they want to push their own beliefs on the children of today, instead of teaching them things the right way.