Many of us in the GLBTQ community grew up in an education system which at best discussed sexuality in vague terms, and at worst gave us the message that sex outside of marriage is immoral. Homosexuality, if mentioned, was viewed as something abhorrent.
Yet, much like the change in attitude of society towards sex and sexual orientation, sex education in schools has evolved and expanded to now include discussion of diversity and GLBTQ issues.
We spoke to two Alberta organizations that are primarily responsible for disseminating this information in Calgary and Edmonton schools, to learn more about them, better understand what topics they teach, and see what challenges they encounter in our province.
The Calgary Sexual Health Centre
Pam Krause is the Executive Director of the Calgary Sexual Health Centre (CSHC), which has been a recommended resource of the Calgary Board of Education since 1975. The centre offers a five class, five topic presentation as part of the CALM (Career and Life Management) program in schools. The topics include anatomy and physiology; abstinence and birth control; sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV and safer sex; values, relationships and decision-making; and DARE (Diversity and Respecting Everyone). This last topic was added in an earlier form in 1997 as an anti-homophobia program. When the centre started presenting this topic, the main goal was to create a safer space for GLBTQ youth in the classroom, along with generating allies within the ranks of teachers and other students.
The anti-homophobia topic was changed to DARE because, once they started discussing diversity and GLBTQ topics, the feedback from youth was they weren’t homophobic – therefore calling out homophobia in this section was a bit confusing to them.
Pam was more than pleased to see this happen. "...To me, that means we’ve really had an evolution of this issue in our society, so our organization has responded to that."
Regarding parents who might have issues with the work that the CSHC does, schools cover this by asking students to bring back two consent forms – one for the first four sections of the presentation, and one for the DARE section.
"I have been at this agency for almost ten years," said Pam, "...and I have never had a complaint call from a parent. Ever." This seems to indicate that parents are embracing the work - perhaps even happy that someone is broaching the subject with their kids.
Of course, it hasn’t been entirely smooth when it came to discussing queer issues and sexuality. Putting aside the issues with Bill 44, there have been some schools in the past which have been reluctant to teach the DARE section.
"We’ve just been persistent and patient and we keep ensuring the teachers are hearing the questions from the youth which do relate to being LGBT, and interestingly...the schools have come along."
A lot of the centre’s work has been bringing teachers along and trying to make them understand how homophobia affects youth. The interesting thing is that, once the Calgary Sexual Health Centre holds an initial DARE session, a school’s administration becomes enthusiastic about having the centre come back and teach the topic again.
As well, parents are encouraged to work with the centre. Besides any information sent home with students of the CALM program, the centre offers programs for parents to discuss sexuality with children aged 5 and under and a more advanced program for parents of 6-12 year-olds. According to Pam, their research indicates when parents talk to kids at a young age about sexuality, their children open up to them – kids want a trusted source for information on sexuality. And to further assist parents, Pam revealed that in the upcoming year they are considering enhancing these programs by creating a workshop specifically for parents of GLBTQ kids. This is in addition to the vast amount of information the centre has available on their website.
Unfortunately, there are some groups who would rather their children remain in the dark, because they feel the topics covered by the Calgary Sexual Health Centre go against religious doctrine. For example, the Calgary Catholic School District has never worked with the centre because CSHC is a pro-choice organization, and consequently, the centre has no interaction with Catholic students. This is something Pam says they have struggled with, as they know young people with no sex education are more likely to put themselves at risk for STIs and unplanned pregnancy. That’s not to say Catholic schools don’t offer sex health education; it’s just provided by a group following Catholic teachings with regards to sex and sexuality.
As for parents of other religions with children in the public school system, thanks to Bill 44 (the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Amendment Act) they can simply choose to pull their child out of the DARE session, or even the whole CSHC presentation. Of course, the ridiculousness about the opt-out provisions in Bill 44 and the Catholic stance is that kids actually want this information, and at the very least they can simply talk to the students who did attend the presentation, or get the information off the Internet.
This is why, Pam explains, the Calgary Sexual Health Centre has decided to reach this audience via the Internet through podcasts. "We’ve got a series of 12 podcasts about sexuality and youth - 2 of them on our website now."
If they can’t reach teens in the schools, the CSHC is still committed to reaching them and educating them. "We’re just hoping the word will spread. We’ve got 190 subscribers on iTunes already for the podcast, and we haven’t done any marketing."
This is a good sign, as Pam is hoping the podcasts and the information on CSHC’s website will be broad enough that the word and knowledge will be disseminated.
The Options Sexual Health Association (Edmonton)
While they do have the same concerns, Edmonton splits up the sexual education a bit differently from Calgary. We interviewed Dr. Brian Parker (Ph. D., Ed. D.) who works with Options Sexual Health Association (formerly Planned Parenthood).
Much like Calgary, when dealing with the Edmonton Public School board, Options has a comprehensive workshop covering abstinence, birth control, STIs and HIV, relationships, and sexual decision making, among others. The difference is that Options doesn’t have a separate program dealing with GLBTQ issues specifically – their workshops in schools are more geared towards heterosexual couplings. However, Brian adds, "We always take an inclusive standpoint and talk about orientation at every single one of our workshops. We try to be as inclusive as possible." Usually the diversity portion of any in-class education is handled by the Pride Centre of Edmonton with additional information/workshops offered through their youth group, YouthSpace.
As for the sexual health workshops in the schools, while 90% of the education Options provides is to classes in Grades 9 and 11, they additionally customize workshops to the needs of other groups, such as group homes, after school programs, Boys and Girls clubs, Camp fYrefly, and Exposurefest. Furthermore, Option’s counselling services are available to help clients with their individual sexual health needs – this includes developing strategies to help GLBTQ clients with the coming out process.
Additionally, Options has developed a "Help 4 U" card which they hand out as part of their workshops. This card lists resources such as the STI centre, the Birth Control Centre, HIV Edmonton, the Pride Centre of Edmonton, and other websites/contact resources. Options also provides information for parents including how to talk to teens about sexual health issues – this includes discussing gender and sexual orientation.
As for Bill 44, Brian told me they haven’t really noticed a drop in the number of people in the classrooms. However, he does know the teachers are bearing the brunt of this government policy. From Brian’s perspective, he understands a lot of the teachers are a little weary of all the extra work and legalities involved with Bill 44, and the right it gives parents to opt their kids out of sex education.
Unlike the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, Options at one time did go into Catholic schools, but the Edmonton Catholic School District started adding more restrictions (i.e. don’t talk about abortion, don’t talk about condoms, etc.). Options decided there were other agencies better suited to provide what the Catholic School board wants to teach their students.
While it’s unfortunate certain groups would deny valuable health information to their children, the evolution of sex education is a vast improvement from the experiences of previous generations. Certainly more promising is the openness of today’s youth towards seeking out this information, and how much more responsive sexual health agencies have become in providing it. It’s still an evolving process, yet at least our youth has a large and growing number of resources available to help them make responsible choices about their sexual health.