Ontario to Kick it Old School With 1998 Sex Ed Curriculum

By Christian Nathler
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Let’s check in on some things that happened in 1998.

In sports, France won the World Cup. In politics, Bill Clinton was impeached. In music, Fatboy Slim released his second studio album You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. And in Ontario, the province introduced a new sex ed curriculum that we, 20 years later, will revert to as early as next fall.

That’s because Education Minister Lisa Thompson, on behalf of recently elected Premier Doug Ford, announced yesterday that the province will scrap the most recent sex ed revision from 2015 and kick it old school.

“The sex-ed component is going to be reverted back to the manner in which it was prior to the changes that were introduced by the Liberal government,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

Old school, of course, brings us back to a time before topics like online bullying, sexting, same-sex relationships, and gender identity were given their due attention by educators. When B4-4 represented as good an authority on sex as any ‘ol gym teacher.

It’s no surprise Doug Ford vowed to repeal the 2015 sex ed update, which was considered controversial by his conservative base for making homosexuality, masturbation, and sex in the digital age topics of discussion in the classroom. Oh, and a little thing called consent.

As one commenter observed, the new motto is something like “we don’t talk about the gays, masturbation is a sin, and there’s no such thing as gender identity.”

Anyway, most kids learn about sex at school, not from the school, so maybe none of this matters all that much.