Sex education isn’t just an educational obligation to fulfil. It’s an ongoing process throughout life that requires reflection, learning and conversation to keep yourself and others safe.
In elementary school, Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum covers topics including puberty, body hygiene, consent, healthy relationships, contraception and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
For many, the last sex-ed course they’ll take is in high school. If this was the last time an adult accessed information or had a healthy conversation surrounding sex education, how much could they be missing without even realizing it?
While there’s no denying having conversations about these topics can be uncomfortable, they shouldn’t end.
Recently, the ongoing Cornell case has brought renewed attention and conversation to consent, sexual assault and sex education on college and university campuses.
The way people discuss sexual assault cases can reveal stark misconceptions about consent. The language and ideas used often show why not revisiting sex education is truly harmful.
These include victim blaming, sexual coercion, assumptions that being sexually promiscuous equates to ongoing consent, relationship “obligations” overriding consent and other harmful misconceptions.
But it’s not just consent. A Canadian Medical Association Journal article reports that 37 per cent of Canadian youth younger than 21 feel unprepared for menarche, or their first period.
There are also concerns about inconsistent condom use. A survey by LetsStopAIDS asked Canadians aged 18 to 24 years-old if their protection use was “infrequent” or “all the time.” The “all the time” usage went down from 53 per cent in 2020 to 24 per cent in 2024.
According to CATIE, an Ontario study found rising rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV and syphilis between 2013 and 2023. Cases involving two infections diagnosed at the same time increased by an average of 10 per cent annually. Researchers recommended targeted STI sexual health education and conversation, alongside better access to testing and other supports, to help address these trends.
Gen Z and younger millennials are often considered the progressive and open-minded generations when it comes to these topics, but that doesn’t make us immune to harmful messages about sexual health: manosphere content, “body count” discourse and non-transparent contraception information, among others.
Researchers writing in Frontiers in Psychology note that receiving limited or inaccurate information about sex is linked to believing myths about sexuality. I think protecting ourselves and other people with an awkward conversation will always be a better option than the alternative.
I don’t deny that a lot of younger people have a decent understanding of these topics. But there are still flaws in the quality, accuracy and completeness of the information, especially when adults rely on what they already know rather than seeking new information.
A 2019 Canadian health survey found more than half of teens aged 15 to 17 got their sexual health information from school or a parent or guardian while many also turned to the internet or their peers.
Additionally, 85 per cent of teens in the survey reported having an adult they could ask for help or advice about sexual health, but 15 per cent (representing about 165,000 adolescents) did not. So while many young people do have sources and adults to talk to, there’s no telling how comprehensive those discussions are.
Regardless of whether someone chooses to be sexually active, understanding sexual health matters to their health and safety.
Having information at our fingertips isn’t the same as knowing whether it’s accurate. I believe young adults need to question what we think we know, challenge false claims from peers and seek out reliable answers for ourselves.
Otherwise, we’re left making assumptions about healthy communication in a relationship, assumptions about consent, assumptions about other people’s bodies and assumptions about all of the uncomfortable and confusing topics covered by sex education.
It’s not worth the consequences to our physical and mental health or relationships to continue to treat sex education as an afterthought and go on thinking we know everything after a credit is earned.