Let's talk about sex (in 1998), baby!

In the wake of the Ontario government's shameful decision to revert to the 1998 sex ed curriculum, many people have already commented on the deficiencies in that 20-year-old curriculum. It doesn't reflect the existence or needs of gender and sexual minorities, it doesn't talk about consent, it was written when many people had only dial-up internet (if they had home internet at all).

But even if you didn't care about all those things, the fact of the matter is that medical knowledge has evolved. For example:

• The HPV vaccine did not yet exist.  (I myself either hadn't heard of or had forgotten about HPV, despite my sex education having covered every other STD that my adult self has heard of. I can't tell you whether this is a result of the state of medical science or the state of the curriculum.)
• PrEP did not yet exist. (I don't know any more details about how HIV treatment has evolved since then, but I'm sure there's lots of other relevant and important stuff in there.)
• Essure did not yet exist. The only available method of female sterilization was tubal ligation, which is an abdominal surgery and therefore far more drastic.
• Nuvaring and contraceptive patches had not yet been invented. 
• Norplant existed, but many of the issues that led to its subsequent reduced availability/withdrawal from the market had not yet come to light.
• The morning after pill had not yet been approved for use in Canada
• Medical abortion was not yet available in Canada (I don't know whether or not it existed.)
• I don't know if home ovulation tests existed, but I didn't hear about them until well into the 21st century.
• I don't know if puberty blockers existed, but I only heard of them in the past few years.
• We were nearly a decade away from the first male pregnancy.

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head, in my capacity as someone who isn't a medical professional and whose sexual health needs would have been served perfectly well with 1998 medical knowledge.  I'm sure there's tons more!

Everyone would be appalled if 20-year-old Geography or Physics or Computer Science were being taught in schools, because the subject matter has evolved.

Everyone would be appalled if they were given cancer treatment or antibiotics or a weight-loss regime that didn't take into account the last 20 years of medical developments.

If nothing else, everyone should be appalled that they're deliberately reverting to a curriculum in which some technical information is obsolete.