The Framework for our Current School-Based Sex Instruction

            If a teacher were to mention the word “Sex” in a classroom filled with intermediate aged children, he or she would immediately hear giggles and see children covering their mouths with laughter. If a teacher were to mention the word “Sex” in a classroom filled with intermediate aged children 100 years ago, he or she would see jaws drop, and looks of confusion and disgust staring back at him or her. Society used to believe that the topic of sex was completely inappropriate for the classroom; however, by 1975 a specific sex education curriculum was created to educate children on the topic. Why did society and school boards grow to not only accept school-based sex instruction, but eventually encourage it? This paper focuses on the progression of sex education in Ontario schools, by examining the changes that occurred during the time period from 1900-1975. The constant evolution in school-based sex instruction during this time created the foundation for the sex education that children in Ontario have received since the 1980’s.

            Sex instruction in Ontario was initially created to instill social purity amongst the children of the province. In 1877, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed,[1] a group of women who based their initial ideas from feminist groups in Britain, to educate children on the topic of sex, at home and in the school. The initial goal of these women was to abolish “white slavery”, which was a problem in the 1880’s in Ontario that referred to the sexual trafficking of girls and women.[2] At this time in Ontario, physicians interpreted venereal diseases as a consequence of promiscuity, when in reality many women and girls were being abused.[3]

            In 1897, a doctor by the name of Mary Wood-Allen visited Toronto and gave the WCTU a speech on social impurity. Dr. Wood-Allen encouraged mothers to provide their children with knowledge of sex.[4] The mother was considered the ‘moral centre of the home,’[5] and was deemed the best parental figure for the job of maintaining social purity. The superintendent for the Department of Social Purity, Mrs. A Lucas, claimed in 1898 that mothers who would not provide their children with knowledge on the topic were considered to be inadequate and were contributing to the problem at hand.[6]

            The WCTU established the Department of Purity and Mother’s Meetings in 1900.[7] Later renamed the Department of Moral Education and Mother’s Meetings,[8] the department provided mothers with strategies and materials on sex instruction. Question and answer boxes along with Wood-Allen’s publications were available at these meetings, and expectations for children were outlined.[9] Daughters would not masturbate nor explore their bodies with other children, would accept a standard of social purity, marry sexually chaste men, give birth to healthy children and make her home and family the centre of her life.[10] Sons, on the other hand, were to be taught to not masturbate, to refrain from drinking alcohol, smoking, and swearing, to avoid shady companions, to confess indiscretions to his mother, to commit to sexual chastity, to seek out a chaste woman, to indulge in sexual relations only when willing to raise a child, and to reject the masculine environment which boys were often exposed to.[11] Physical activity was to be encouraged for all children in order to curb any sexual urges one may develop. Playmates were frowned upon, and poor, working-class, immigrant, or coloured children were considered to be sources of danger.[12] The WCTU felt that public schools were breeding grounds for ‘public school immorality,’[13] which was a term identified with venereal disease, prostitution and masturbation. They did not like that the white middle-class students were mixing with members of the opposite sex and of lower-class immigrant children. The program of moral education was flawed because it was targeted at white-middle class mothers, and underestimated the available resources to the working class and minority races.[14]

            The number of mothers who provided sex education to their children was actually smaller than the number of mothers who did not. Most mothers were often unable as opposed to unwilling to provide their children with the information that the mother’s meetings provided. However, tension arose in 1903 because the WCTU mothers were embarrassed that most women were not educating their children on social purity.[15]

             School-based sex instruction began in 1900.[16] A man by the name of Arthur Beall was hired by the WCTU to educate schoolboys on the topic of social purity.[17] Upon request of the teacher, he modified his lectures so they were also suitable for the female students. In 1904 Beall was designated the WCTU’s White Cross missionary, which indicated his connection to the White Cross League, a men’s organization that promoted chastity.[18]

            In 1911, the Social Reform Association made a presentation to the Ontario Education Association (OEA) that stated that home-based sex education had failed children. The SPRA suggested that because the OEA was convinced of the importance for teaching personal hygiene and moral purity in the schools, the association should petition the minister of education to deal with the matter and appoint properly qualified teachers to educate students on the matter.[19]

            In 1912 Beall was hired by the Department of Education and accepted the position of “Special Lecturer on Moral Subjects”,[20] at which point he stopped working for WCTU.[21] Mothers felt that Beall’s lectures would make their sons into better men, citizens, husbands, and fathers.[22] Beall’s lectures contained detailed warnings about the consequences of masturbation, tobacco, alcohol, and pre-marital sex, and the importance of social purity, in reference to one’s body being a holy temple.[23] There is evidence that he also exposed himself in front of the class when discussing the biological features of males. It is obvious that union mothers were not aware of this fact since Beall was encouraged to lecture well into the 1930’s.[24] Beall also told the boys that masturbation caused insanity, which in his defense, was believed to be true by physicians in the early 1900’s.[25] Beall would finish his lectures with request that each boy sign a resolution to remain pure and loyal and to teach their children the information he had taught them.[26] Beall continued to lecture during the First World War, as he was identified as “Lecturer on Eugenics and Personal Hygiene in High and Public Schools.”[27] Arthur Beall died in 1939,[28] but is known as an important figure to beginning of school-based sex instruction in Ontario.

            During the era of the First World War, school-based sex instruction was encouraged to take on the role of emphasizing the prevention of venereal disease, along with maintaining social purity. In 1914, while many men were involved in World War One, 29% of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) had either syphilis or gonorrhea. News of the venereal infection in the CEF reached Canada in 1916, and by 1917, syphilis and gonorrhea accounted for 12% of all illness in the Canadian military with the exception of battle injuries.[29] Beall had been lecturing for years by this point, and yet, Canada had the highest rate of venereal disease among troops in Western Europe.[30] Physicians in Canada blamed the Ontario WCTU for being incompetent in terms of their knowledge regarding venereal diseases, although WCTU had attempted to incorporate education officials and social hygienists into the program, they refused.[31] Millions of dollars were being spent on the treatment for venereal diseases, but students were not being educated on how to prevent them.

            In the 1920’s and 30’s Sex was beginning to show up more openly in the media, and parents no longer had a say whether or not their child would learn about sex. They could control however, who they would learn it from:

            In the absence of wholesome sex information, they pointed out, boys and girls learned about sexuality through readily available commercial material. Sex education might be acquired from parents, peers, or movies, but, in a culture permeated with sexuality, it could not be avoided.[32]

The 1920’s brought the opening of dance halls, amusement parks, and automobiles; which brought men and women together in new, un-chaperoned ways.[33] Middle-class youth became more sexually active after the First World War, and the number of venereal disease cases increased also.[34] Family Life Sex Instruction was introduced in the 1920’s as a means for sex education. Family Life Sex Instruction during the 1930’s emphasized the idea that girls should groom themselves before dates, and perform other similar means of attracting a future husband.[35] It also included lessons on the ideal family, and how a girl was to live her life anticipating the day she would have her own family to care for. For two decades this form of sex education emphasized family roles, and drifted from the fact based information that children needed to combat the knowledge they were learning through the media.

            In 1944, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation endorsed compulsory venereal disease testing for all Ontario high school students.[36] This was also the year that the curriculum guidelines were adjusted to include the study of venereal disease for grades ten through twelve. Boys and girls were instructed separately and parental permission was required. Over the course of World War II, parental support increased for school-based sex instruction due to the growing number of people affected with venereal diseases.

By the end of the war, penicillin was discovered as a treatment against syphilis and gonorrhea, causing rates of syphilis and gonorrhea to fall in Ontario.[37] However, juvenile delinquency rose at this time, and the demand for school-based sex instruction increased. In 1949, almost all of the physiological information in the curriculum was modified and removed. In 1950, the Minister of the Department of Education, William Dunlop, removed the venereal disease component from the revised secondary school health curriculum guidelines.[38] This was essentially a step backward in the development of a factual sex education program.

            Ontario’s educators continued to develop Family Life Education which included topics such as menstruation, gestation, seminal emissions, sexual intercourse, conception, childbirth, promoting the importance of attracting the opposite sex, sexual chastity, marriage and parenthood.[39] The main goal of the program was to produce a stable family that was modeled after white, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon heterosexual ideals.[40] However, some teachers felt that the Family Life Education was contributing to the insecurity it intended to eliminate. The new guidelines stressed the importance of white, middle-class, gender-role conformity and compulsory heterosexuality for girls in grades nine through twelve. Grade twelve was solely focused on child study, and in the younger grades, the health education curriculum focused on enhancing and improving girls’ posture and understanding the interests of the opposite sex.[41] By the 1950’s, girls were pressured to be attractive, and emphasis was placed on finding a steady boyfriend who could potentially become their husband. The Family Life Education curriculum recommended the coeducational study on menstruation in grade seven; however, the department’s health education curriculum guidelines restricted this topic to females in grade nine.[42] Boys in grade twelve were subjected to a video tilted, ‘Human Growth’ which gave information regarding male sex characteristics, nocturnal emissions, fertilization, gestation and birth. This film was targeted at students in the grade eight level.[43] Sex education was scattered throughout many subjects such as biology, social studies and home economics. Sex education received little support from the government and students relied on sympathetic teachers for much of their sex knowledge.[44] Although children were beginning to learn valuable sex information, they were learning it much later than they should have been.

            The mid 1960’s brought some major changes to the sex education curriculum. By 1965, rates of unwanted pregnancy had increased significantly since 1945, with 8,580 unwed mothers in Ontario alone.[45] Pregnant single girls often dropped out of school, lived in maternity homes, were known to have shotgun weddings, lived in poverty and isolation, or raised their children alone.[46] The Ontario Department of Education changed the Health Education Guidelines during the mid-1960’s. However, the board feared parental opposition so schools segregated their classes, gave only physiological information and established consultative communities with parental representation.[47]

            In 1969, the guidelines were revised again, this was an important revision because it included the removal of Christian-based sex education and focused on the whole child. Valuable information was given for the first time in Canadian history; however, ‘family values’ were still considered the basic structure of the program.[48] Criminal Code revisions also took place in 1969, and contraception and abortion became medicalized; however, 43% of obstetrician gynecologists wanted parental consent before providing anyone with birth control.[49] The changes to the Health Education Guidelines and to the Criminal Code were quite progressive, however they could not fully satisfy the thirst for sexual knowledge that students had.

            The changes to school-based sex instruction that occurred in the 1970’s created the foundation for the sex education programs children have been taught since the 1980’s. In 1971, a group called the Toronto Women’s Caucus (TWC), which was formed in 1970, attempted to persuade the Toronto Board of Education to expand the Family Life Education Program to include birth control, family planning, and abortion, and requested that high schools provide contraception to students. The board was not persuaded. They did however, give principals the right to extend the program but only to students in grade 11 and above. [50] The TWC strongly believed that women had the right to birth control, “Women’s oppression is worrying about getting pregnant. Women’s liberation is being able to take care of it before it happens.”[51] The TWC urged female students to establish birth control rights committees that would petition for birth control availability in schools.[52] Student Birth Control Rights Committees (SBCRC) distributed handbooks published by the TWC and petitions demanding birth control.

            The Toronto Board of Education settled on a sex-segregated family living program for grades seven through twelve in 1971. This new program included the hiring of four new teachers to implement physical and health education, along with kits that included films, slideshows, pamphlets, and anatomy guides. It included discussions of venereal disease, birth control, and abortion.[53] The SBCRC disliked the new program because it presupposed that sex only occurred between married couples. They wanted sex education in primary schools, contraceptive availability in grades eight and nine and less emphasis on anatomy and more emphasis on relationships between the two sexes.[54]

            The Ontario Department of Education created new sex education guidelines in 1975. These guidelines required teachers to provide information on birth control and abortion, and discuss the views held by society regarding sexuality. This was the first time that the curriculum included the discussion of society’s views on sexuality.[55] The adjustments made to the curriculum during the 1970’s demonstrated true progression in the students’ right to obtain knowledge on the topic of sex.

            Since 1975, Ontario’s Sex Education guidelines have only improved in terms of factual information, availability of contraceptives, and knowledgeable teachers. The AIDS epidemic during the 1980’s only helped the further develop the sex education programs in Ontario’s schools. School-based sex instruction has developed into a common subject that children have begun learning as early as primary school. The reasons for the progression in sex education over the past 100 years have changed many times; from decreasing the amount of prostitution, to creating social purity, to decreasing the risk of insanity (which later proved to be false), to educating students on venereal disease, to creating ideal family values, to abstinence and pregnancy prevention, and finally, to thoroughly educating students on all aspects regarding the topic of sex. Sex education over the past two decades has proved to inform students on how to achieve an overall healthy sexual existence. The well-developed sex education program that exists in Ontario today would not be in use, if it were not for the constant progression that occurred in school-based sex instruction during the time period of 1900-1975.