Ontario sex education to highlight abstinence
Significant
impact on student
behavior deemed unlikely
By Joe
Couto
Special to ChristianWeek
TORONTO–Alarmed by increasing teenage pregnancy rates and stubbornly high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), the Ontario government has made abstinence the cornerstone of its new sex education program for the province’s elementary students.
Calling abstinence a "positive approach" to sexuality, Education Minster Dave Johnson unveiled the new health and physical education curriculum for students in grades 1-8 on June 29 as part of a sweeping reform of the province’s education curriculum.
Under the new curriculum, grade 8 students must be taught the importance of abstinence as a method of avoiding pregnancy and STDs. They will also learn to identify symptoms, methods of transmission and ways to prevent such diseases as HIV and AIDS and explore "reproductive health" (including various methods of birth control) and gender roles.
Policymakers in Ontario and across Canada have been alarmed by the grim statistics over the past 10 years showing Canada’s teen pregnancies and incidence of STDs soaring despite mandatory sex education for students in public, private and Catholic schools:
• Canada’s teenage pregnancy rate soared by 15.3 percent between 1987 and 1994 with 24,700 babies born to women aged 15 to 19. Meanwhile, the number of teen pregnancies that ended in abortions rose to 45 percent of all pregnancies in 1994 compared to 26 percent in 1974.
• The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that teenage girls between 15 and 19 have the highest rates of STDs of any age group and that one form of STD, chlamydia, is nine times higher for this group than the average for all women.
