Sex Ed U-turn

he children of the public school system are back in class this week in Ontario. Part of their curriculum is what is often called sex-ed in the press although it is really much broader, including cyber-safety at virtually every grade, as well as  “learning abilities, skills and talents, personal or cultural values and beliefs, gender identity, sexual orientation, family background, personal preferences, allergies and sensitivities.”

The teachers offering this program may need to be treated for whiplash because after promising that the awful Liberal curriculum would be scrapped the Conservatives first did so, then reintroduced an outline and timeline virtually identical to that of the Libs. This wild U-turn makes it obvious that the Ford government courted the votes of conservative Christians and other faith groups without much understanding of what was happening in schools. Those opponents had argued, vociferously, that education about sexuality was the purview of families and often spread gross misinformation about what the former curriculum contained. All faiths discourage lying yet that was happening constantly. Now some of these folk are back protesting the latest changes




School boards will rush to revise the revised curriculum thanks to a government which doesn't seem to grasp that its role is to act in the best interest of society as a whole, even when that requires making informed but difficult choices. 

Sadly, one major change is that parents will be able to opt their children out of the program, which is chilling. There are far too many accounts offered by those who were raised in conservative religious households who were sexually abused, in part because they'd had no education about healthy relationships nor about the possibility of sexual predators. 

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