Teach sex education, not just table manners

(PhysOrg.com) -- Some argue sexual health education is in need of an update, but what the new incarnation will look like is still up for debate.

Earlier this year, Ontario’s Ministry of Education proposed changes to the sex education curriculum that would include lessons being taught as early as Grade 3 on “invisible differences” between people, such as gender identity, sexual orientation and family background.

The announcement sparked controversy among parents and religious groups and what was to be implemented in September has now been shelved pending review.

But University of Western Ontario anthropology professor Douglass St. Christian says now is not the time to close the book on the outdated curriculum.

Developing an open, honest, comprehensive health educational strategy will reduce child and teenage vulnerability to unwanted abuse, pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, says St. Christian.

Beginning at a young age, giving children “the right names” for body parts and informing them about their sexuality will empower them to resist abuse, he argues.

“The new curriculum that was to be rolled out in September is the result of almost three years of consultation with experts and educators, and the medical and social service communities around these kinds of issues,” he says.

“It was very thorough, in some instances I don’t think it goes far enough. It still holds heterosexuality up as the standard, against which everything else is a diversity. It misses the fact that heterosexuals are diverse too.”

Although it falls short in some areas, St. Christian is supportive of the changes.

“Kids are going to make decisions - good, bad or ugly - about what they are going to do. We are not going to stop that. All this curriculum did was give them information that helped them make decisions that are at least healthy decisions.”

The sexual health curriculum currently in place has not been updated since 1998.
Nothing has changed over the years, says St. Christian, but the curriculum needs to be expanded.

“We live in a society where sex and sexuality are key moral issues for some, but not all in our society. That makes politicians uncomfortable,” he says.

St. Christian teaches a course at Western on queer cultures and has found students are less informed about sexual health than they are versed in “table manners.”

“They come as products of a society that is intensely pornographic - sex is everywhere. And at the same time, have been given less information and less instruction, less guidance about how to deal with sex in their own lives than they’ve been given about table manners.”

In his class he uses a photovoice technique to encourage students to critically think about sex, sexuality and desire in their lives and present it using photos and text.

The project is not about producing porn, he explains. It challenges students to think about the “pornographic gaze” which in society is the only acceptable way of visualizing sex, says St. Christian.

This exercise helps students understand how sex and sexuality are constructed and conditioned by the society in which they live, and then examine the different ways other cultures construct sex and sexuality.

“I’m an anthropologist. I am trying to understand how other people live, by first encouraging students to understand how they live,” he says.

“And out of this they begin to understand the broad range of diversity that is out there, including the diversity inside the heterosexual cohort and they begin to understand their experience of the world is indeed conditioned by the historical moment that they live in.”

Provided by University of Western Ontario