Two kids enter grade school. The first is from a family that has no intention of sheltering him from the way other people live their lives; the second is from a family that believes homosexuality is a sin, refuses to acknowledge the presence of same-sex couples to their child and will eventually tell him that gays have something to be ashamed of.

Which child stands to benefit more from classes teaching him to treat people of all orientations equally, and to not look down on kids raised by gay couples?

Two older kids, 13 years old each, are going into Grade 8. One has parents who taught him about the birds and bees at a relatively young age, and have since been open and frank with him about how to behave responsibly once he starts having sex. The other's parents have avoided ever broaching the subject with him, figuring that he won't need to worry about such matters for many years to come, and by then will be old and wise enough to make smart decisions on his own.

Which teenager would be better served by comprehensive sex ed courses?

The irony of controversial school curricula is that opposition usually comes from the parents of children who'd most benefit from it. And such is the case in two ongoing disputes with different complainants, but similar complaints.

In Toronto, Muslim parents are attempting to pull their children out of an anti-homophobia class at a downtown school. Not surprisingly, social conservatives of all denominations have lined up behind them, with the controversy played up on family values Web sites under the headline "Toronto School Children Forced to Endure Homosexual Sensitivity Training."

Oh, the horror. Imagine, innocent young children being shown videos that discourage them from bullying kids with two parents of the same sex. What's next? Textbooks urging them not to hurl racial epithets at minorities?

Maybe that's a cheap shot. Maybe it's not entirely reasonable to expect devout Muslims - or Christians, or Jews - to embrace a way of life they've been taught since their earliest days is a sinful one. But as long as their children are in with the general student population, it's hard to see how it's any more desirable for the kids to look down on classmates from same-sex families than it is for them to be mocked for their religious or ethnic background - something none of us, one hopes, would stand for.

A controversy now brewing in New Brunswick is a little less clear-cut. There, a contingent of parents fighting a new middle school sex education program are doing so on the basis that it inappropriately crosses the line into discussion of individual human desires - a defensible (if debatable) point. But underpinning much of the campaign against the program is the familiar contention that it places too much focus on safe sex.

The program may promote abstinence as the best choice. But introducing it "alongside such issues as sexually transmitted disease, masturbation, birth-control methods, teen pregnancy and the nature of a healthy relationship," Presbyterian Minister Roland De Vries argued on the parents' behalf in these pages on Thursday, isn't good enough for those who want it to be presented as "the only choice."

What Rev. De Vries and others are asking, much the same as Muslim parents in Toronto, is for our schools to prepare children for a world that does not exist. Ignore the fact that most of mainstream society now treats gays as equals, they're saying. Ignore the fact that most of us have premarital sex, and those who are ill-prepared make costly and potentially life-threatening mistakes. That's not the society we want them to grow up in.

Only, it is the society they'll grow up in. Eventually, they'll decide for themselves which values to embrace - and some, for better or worse, will choose the same ones as their parents. But if we let them grow up sheltered from the views and lifestyles that increasingly dominate society, we'll be doing them no favours.