Cloud of uncertainty on sex ed curriculum

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

The 2015 updates to Ontario’s sex education and health curriculum are history thanks to the new PC government.

But exactly what students will learn in classrooms this fall remains a bit unclear.

Last week, Education Minister Lisa Thompson announced curriculum implemented three years ago was on the way out.

Her party intends to develop a new strategy, promising extensive consultation with parents.

Originally, the PCs announced that, in the interim, students will receive sex and health education from a model developed in 1998, one that included little mention of modern topics like consent or gender identity, and included little mention of the Internet. However, following an initial backlash, on July 16, Thompson said the fall’s curriculum would include discussion on modern topics.

Thompson later released a statement addressing the issue, including the following quote.

“As of today, we have made no decisions on what the new curriculum will look like. The final decision on the scope of the new curriculum will be based on what we hear from Ontario parents. While these consultations occur, we are reverting to the full health and physical education curriculum that was last taught in 2014.  This curriculum leaves ample space to discuss current social issues.”

Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), says while on one hand he’s happy to hear these contemporary topics could remain, it sounded to him like the decisions were being made hastily.

“They are responding to some of the pressure. But this is what happens when you make policy on the fly,” Bischof said.

In general, Bischof criticized the decision to revert back to the 1998 model.

“We were certainly supportive of the revised curriculum that was released in 2015. It was entirely appropriate for kids’ needs. It deals with issues that were not included in the 1998 version, it deals with consent, same-sex relations and the cyber world in which kids live in now,” Bischof says “To backtrack and pretend the world is as it was 20 years ago is burying your head in the sand.”

Bischof says the whole process is frustrating his members, calling on the Ford government to inform educators exactly what they will teach come September.

Opponents of the 2015 curriculum claimed there was a lack of proper consultation tied to the new lessons, an argument Bischof doesn’t buy.

“It had been well consulted on, including 4,000 parents and 100 educators,” he says.

As far as the future, Bischof says, to him, the best-case scenario is the new government realizes drastic change isn’t needed.

“I think they’ll find the vast majority of educators and parents feel the curriculum is good the way it is,” he says, referring to the 2015 version created by the Liberal government.

However, he admits he has “nothing on which to base any confidence” that this will occur.

Speaking with The Express before Thompson’s comments on July 16, Barbara Perry, president of PFLAG Canada’s Durham Region chapter, called the situation a “20-year step backward.”

“We’re really disconcerted and frightened in some respects,” Perry says. “It puts LGBTQ teens at risk, and is backing away from the conversations in terms of respect and safety for those communities.”

Perry says the reversion back to the late-90s curriculum is astonishing, calling it an “unacceptable approach.”

“I was surprised that it was done without consultation, and without having something else in place,” she says.

The Oshawa Express reached out to Durham Concerned Parents, a local group that has protested the Liberals’ 2015 sex education and health curriculum in the past three years.

Nancy Strange is a group member and an Oshawa parent.

Her daughter was 10 years old when the 2015 curriculum came into place.

Strange says she immediately became “very alarmed” by some of the topics of discussion.

“The Durham District School Board had sent home some literature to explain some of the changes. It was very suggestive of mature, sexual things.

She says her daughter began to question things she had never before, and Strange feels it is because the new curriculum was starting certain conversations too early.

“I think it puts so much energy into making kids to think about things they wouldn’t normally [at these ages],” she says.

Even after taking her daughter out of the classes, Strange says she was still exposed to the contents through interaction with her friends and classmates.

While she acknowledges today’s youth face issues that they wouldn’t have 20 years ago, to her, those should fit in across the entire curriculum and not just sexual education.

For Strange, the key is fulsome consultation, something she says was lacking three years ago.

“We were told there was one parent from every school who could provide consultation,” Strange says. However, she alleges wasn’t able to find one parent who provided any feedback on the topic.