I can’t say precisely how similar Canadian families are to American ones, particularly when it comes to parents with small children. Some things seem to be universal though and this might be one of them. Canada recently implemented a plan where they would be expanding sex education for their students, starting off with some big, need-to-know items for first graders. Who could possibly have predicted that anything would go wrong with a plan like this? Well, when it came time to send the kids to class, as many as 90% of the parents in some areas kept their kids home.

Parents of thousands of elementary students across Toronto kept their children out of class Monday to protest the sex-ed portion of Ontario’s new health curriculum.

The hardest hit school was Thorncliffe Park Public School, where only about 130 children showed up for class out of the usual 1,350 — or roughly 10 per cent. At nearby Gateway Public School, some 400 students were away, nearly half the usual enrolment. At Valley Park Middle School, some 590 students were absent out of the total 950.

So let’s see what some of the complaints were, shall we?

“In Grade 1 they should be learning about the ABCs, not sex,” said Thorncliffe Park parent Lubna Awah, who kept her kindergarten son home.

“Boys are boys and girls are girls — why should they learn about a third (gender) in Grade 1?” asked Awah, who said she believes children will be encouraged to question their gender identity as early as Grade 1.

Children really have no absolute need to know where babies come from in first grade, though if the parents want to start easing them into the general gist of things early on that’s up to them. But then, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? This is something for the parents to handle. And even if we were to assume that this was an appropriate age to begin learning the mechanics of reproduction, there is absolutely no way that first grade is the time (assuming there ever is one) to begin indoctrinating impressionable children with an abject rejection of physical reality and have them “questioning their gender.”

I see there were also classes on masturbation for third graders and a special high tech section on “sexting” (and the dangers thereof) for sixth graders. Out of all of them I suppose the one I would be in favor of is the latter, provided it’s handled delicately. Cell phones are another thing that young children lack the experience and maturity to handle, but if they must have the technology in their hands they should be warned against any perverts asking them to send naughty pictures.

This entire proposal should have been rejected, but I suppose the world has “moved on” too much to hope for that. And since this will be coming to a school near you soon (assuming it’s not there already) you may has well be prepared. At some point there likely won’t be much choice left but to home school. What’s really shocking about this Canadian story was that when it was proposed earlier, less than half of the parents surveyed opposed it.