Straddling the divide between public policy and private parts, a Toronto school has found the middle way.

We take you now to Thorncliffe Park School — Ground Zero for the parental protests that erupted last year over modernization of a curriculum two decades out of date. Keen to ward off yet more class boycotts, the school’s principal has come up with a classic Canadian compromise: Sanitized sex education that covers up the explicit bits.

The school opted to excise any reference to penis and vagina for Grade 1 students whose parents couldn’t countenance such words.

Is this yet another example of “reasonable accommodation” gone awry, further evidence of culture wars erupting around us? Or did an elementary school do the right thing for wrongheaded parents?

Let’s consider the first rule of sex education: Slow down, because in a world of relentless sexting and texting, we need more contexting.

All the evidence from other jurisdictions shows this curriculum was carefully thought through, not least the discussion of body parts for first graders. Teaching students anatomically correct terms — enabling them to accurately describe any inappropriate touching or sexual abuse by adults — benefits police and other investigating authorities trying to combat the scourge of child abuse.

Explicit references to body parts help students protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted illnesses. It’s important to explain human rights and homosexuality at the appropriate age, and for teachers to have answers when students ask about touchy matters like masturbation.

Persuading some parents of these facts is easier said than done. But even if you can’t win them over, finding a way to reach — and teach — students is the ultimate goal.

The most maddening and exasperating aspect of last year’s protests was the attempt by a minority of people — motivated by religion, culture or ideology — to impose their views on the vast majority of parents who support modern sex education for their children. The protesters argued, absurdly and selfishly, that if they disliked the sex-ed curriculum, everyone else’s children should also be deprived of that education.

It was an utterly anti-democratic example of the intolerance (and tyranny) of the minority imposing its unsupported views on everyone else — aided by some opposition Progressive Conservative MPPs and abetted by their current leader, Patrick Brown. What made their anti-sex-ed campaign even more objectionable was that their protests were so pointless — for the simple reason that anyone with a religious objection could easily opt out, taking their child out of class.

Don’t like it, don’t take it. But don’t take away my child’s right to a modern education.

Despite that opt-out option, hundreds of parents escalated their protests by withdrawing their children from all classes last spring (not just sex-ed instruction). Many of them also delayed enrolment in the public school system last September to ratchet up the pressure.

Against that backdrop of disruptive protests, Thorncliffe Park principal Jeff Crane undertook extensive consultations. He proposed an alternative class for those first graders whose parents refused to let them see or hear any explicit references to their anatomy — exposing them, at least, to the rest of the health and physical education curriculum.

Did he go too far in acquiescing to unreasonable demands?

In sex-ed, as in sex itself, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Compromise can be a good thing if it minimizes the harm that might come from depriving first graders of any sex-ed at all should their parents persist with boycotts.

The religious objectors had the right, under our existing system, to deprive their children of essential learning. Now, these students will at least benefit from the rest of the curriculum, notwithstanding their parents’ obstinacy.

That’s better than the alternative of an outright boycott. The key point is that all other students, in this school and across the province, will still get unexpurgated sex-ed classes that don’t dilute the overall curriculum.

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A child’s interests should always come first. In this case, a principled principal at Thorncliffe Park has shown us that “reasonable accommodation” with unreasonable parents can produce a rational compromise that serves society.