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Linda Strobl was mortified when her 14-year-old son came home last fall "quite upset" about his high-school health assignment: Go to the local pharmacy, buy condoms and then beat the other boys at fitting one on a wooden penis in his class.

Ms. Strobl, a public health nurse, admitted she was embarrassed that the pharmacist in her tiny town of Ayr, Ont., would note her son's purchase. She said the lesson also went against the basic hopes she has for her son - that he will practise abstinence until marriage.

"When he's ready to buy [condoms], he's the type of kid that will do it because he has that inner strength that when it's time, he'll manage it. To force him into it at a time when he doesn't feel comfortable and it's not part of what he's chosen to do, that doesn't work."

On Monday, Ms. Strobl persuaded Waterloo Region District School Board staff to consider protocols that would require teachers to give parents of Grade 9 and 10 students outlines of their children's sex ed. classes.

The case is raising questions about parental rights in education. At a time when rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhea rise annually among teens, many sexual health educators say only visceral lessons will speak to youth, but they face another challenge as parents seek special accommodation for their children.

"Human sexuality still is a pretty emotional topic for people. For students and parents, it's based on their own experience and upbringing," said Karen Quigley-Hobbs of the Region of Waterloo public health department.

"Any time you mention sexual education, you're almost throwing gas on a fire."

Similar issues arose in the same school board in 2003, when several parents objected to a questionnaire administered as part of Girl Time, a sexuality program for Grade 7 and 8 girls that focuses on building self-esteem. The 150-question survey was meant to help gauge the sexual attitudes of teenage girls, but some parents balked at its explicit tone, which they said the school's permission slip purposely did not disclose.

Darlene Mashinter's daughter filled out the survey. Among others, the mother objected to a question that asked girls if their boyfriends "pull their penises out before they come."

"Their answer to that was that they had to use terminology that the children [understood]. But believe me, they realize what 'ejaculate' is too. It was in very poor taste," Ms. Mashinter said.

Linguistic quibbles are one of many hurdles facing sexual educators who come up against diffident parents.

Parental squeamishness is another. In 2004, a parents' group in Nova Scotia grew incensed at the prospect that their members would be pre-emptively forced to discuss the birds and the bees with their children after the province offered youth 12 years old and over a brightly coloured, spiral-bound notebook titled Sex? A Healthy Sexuality Resource.

The 126-page guide offers young readers "good openers" to broach the topic with their parents after school. Several chapters discuss safe sex, including where to get cheap condoms and how to construct a dental dam, but the guide also devotes many pages to warding youngsters off sex.

"Are you prepared to sit down with your child and discuss all of the topics contained in the resource (i.e. all forms of sexual intercourse, the low age of legal consent, what a vibrator is and the 'morning after' pill)?" a parent asked on the Parent Advocates for Accountability Group's website.

In Waterloo, educators are trying to resolve the growing polarization of reluctant parents and progressive sex educators.

"We respect, because we are a public institution, that not everybody's going to agree with what's in the best interest for the individual child," said Mary Lou Mackie, executive superintendent of education at the school board.

"What we try to do is find a way to honour individual people and their particular beliefs, but at the same time promote what we think is in the best interests of the public at large."

Ms. Mackie said the board is embarking on an "Equity Inclusion Strategy," essentially "religion, faith-based and personal-based" accommodation. (Ms. Strobl's concerns, as put forward in a motion by her trustee, are to be addressed when the province releases these new guidelines in June.)

But others argue that myriad opt-out strategies pose problems of their own.

"It's one thing to talk about parental rights, but you also have to talk about the basic rights of youth," said Alex McKay, research co-ordinator at the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.

Mr. McKay said parents need to wake up to the fact that their children will likely have sex before they're 20, and that educators have to teach them where to get condoms and how to put them on years before that. Mr. McKay said that in Ms. Strobl's case, the high-school teacher did just that.

"When you're talking about issues that have as profound a potential impact on people's lives, such as HIV infection and unintended pregnancy, young people have a basic right to potentially life-saving information."