GUELPH POLITICAST #136 - Lyndsey Butcher, SHORE Centre

If you know what sex education is going to look like when school starts on Tuesday, then you're either the education minister, or one of several teachers that's going to defy the provincial government and teach the 2015 health curriculum update anyway. Can anything good come from all this confusion?

Well, as you'll hear on this week's podcast, the answer, for the people who make sex education their business, is "no". People like Lyndsey Butcher, who's the executive director of Sexual Health Options Resources Education (SHORE) Centre in Kitchener. SHORE runs hundreds of courses for students of all ages every year, so you can imagine their feelings about the mixed messages coming out of Queen's Park on sex ed.

But beyond the politics, or maybe because of them, let's consider the issue of sex education this way: is there some form of sex education that all of us can agree on? That's probably doubtful. So when all else fails, shouldn't we rely on science? And doesn't the science show that a robust and multifaceted sex education curriculum creates happier and healthier young people when it comes to their future adult relationships?

That's the message you'll hear from Butcher on this week's podcast. She talks about the work of SHORE, the challenges that teachers are facing this fall, the politics, the new and growing resistance to all the changes, both organized and unorganized, and she discusses the misinformation about the 2015 curriculum. Specifically, you'll hear Butcher reinforce the role of parents in any effective sex education program.

So let's talk about sex, and sex education, on this week's Guelph Politicast!

For more information about the SHORE Centre, or about any of its services, you can learn about them on their website here. Stay tuned as the story develops on the sex ed debate here in Ontario.

The theme music for the Guelph Politicast is from the KPM Klassics collection by Syd Dale.

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