On March 27, I read a column in The Press on the sex education of children in primary school1. Columnist Rose-Aimée Autumn T. Morin wrote about the program implemented in elementary schools in Quebec. I was pleasantly surprised by what I read. Surprise, because I don’t know the same reality at all.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
I am neither a specialist, nor a journalist, nor an adult who would have any credibility. I’m just a 16 year old girl who would like to understand. Understand why, after five years in high school, I only attended a maximum of four sex ed classes. I am delighted that we are educating children about consent and the different family realities, but should we stop there?
Speaking of consent, I’m willing to bet there isn’t a girl my age in Montreal who doesn’t know at least one story. A story of – not to say sexual assault – inappropriate behavior that made a teenage girl uncomfortable who will remember it for the rest of her life. That makes it all the more important that we teach children the notion of consent, but we, teenagers and adults, have not had access to such education.However, we are actors in this social issue.
How to explain that young people who live their first romantic and sexual experiences receive very little, if any, sex education? All this without mentioning the realities of the LGBT community which are not known or taught.
In my class alone, there are at least three people who are not cisgender, that is, who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Three in one class might seem like a lot, but it’s my reality and that of the young people around me. We know how to use pronouns correctly, we know that when a person is in a relationship, it does not necessarily mean that they are straight or gay.
We especially know that those of us who are part of the LGBT community will experience discrimination because we receive no education on the subject.
I don’t blame the teachers, I don’t blame the management, I don’t blame the government. I share a problem that exists and weighs. I do not believe that there is a person in charge, that people are in bad faith. Yet, I don’t think it’s normal that I have to educate my teacher father about the reality of his students from the LGBTQIA+ community because he hasn’t received any training on the subject. I don’t believe the only reason I was able to rush him should be because I watched Sex Educationthat I have trans friends and that I got informed on the internet.
I’m not the only one who knows about the lack of sex education in high school. Last year, in the midst of a pandemic, the student council at my school formulated a wonderful project to fill the gaps in the program. The concept was simple: a group of secondary 5 students trained by an organization would give workshops to 3and and 4and secondary. An anonymous discussion forum would be created to answer questions from those who did not want to ask them in public. Specialists would be present at the school as often as possible. I don’t know where this project is today. Has it been abandoned? Is it subject to endless discussions? I do not know.
What I do know, however, is that I will be graduating from high school in less than three months and I still haven’t received proper sex education.
I could have talked about so much more. I could have written about the fact that genderless toilets at school are very rare, about the fact that female pleasure is ignored because no one talks about it, about the fact that menstrual pain is still a taboo subject . I’ll stick to this: what’s the point of educating children under 10 on the concept of consent and the different family realities if the adults of today and tomorrow don’t know them, not out of bad faith, but for lack of education?