Doug Ford’s sex-ed curriculum has no place in Toronto
October 2018
Imagine Doug Ford as a young boy. It’s the 1960’s and 70’s. He is curious and does not understand his growing and developing body. His teacher at school does not talk about all of the swirling feelings he has inside. His parents don’t talk about them either. There is no Google search for him to consult. He is left wondering about his body and its functions, where he fits into the world of a child becoming a teenager to an adult who goes to work and pays his bills.
This is what the 1998 sex-ed curriculum did for us. This is what Doug Ford is doing to current children by scrapping the updated 2015 sex-ed curriculum introduced by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.
In 1998, 42 pages of vague and not detailed health and physical education were published as The Ontario Curriculum for Grades 1–8. The curriculum was introduced by the Ministry of Education and Training at the time, and it is very general and does not include same-sex relationships, inclusivity, consent, online bullying, sexting, gender identity and many other crucial topics for children to know and understand how it relates to them.
As young children, we learned sex-ed from a Fully Alive textbook. The textbook included information that was considered to be “appropriate” by the 1998 curriculum. What was deemed appropriate was not nearly enough information for us to know going into high school. As a result, we found out about the consequences the hard way.
What has changed in the 20 years that have passed since then? A lot. Quite frankly, too much time has passed to be reinstating an outdated and extremely limiting curriculum that has no bearing on the world we live in today. Technology has progressed immensely since 1998 and students have access to all kinds of content on the internet right at their fingertips.
And God forbid we children had to go outside and play in nature and talk to each other face to face, social media was not even invented in 1998. There was no Instagram or Snapchat for us to frivolously waste our days worrying about an expiring Snapchat streak, if someone liked our most recent Instagram post, or if they followed us back on Twitter. It was unheard of.
In 2015, the Liberal government introduced almost 300 pages (244 to be exact) of more specific information on health and physical education for students in grades one to eight in the revised version of The Ontario Curriculum for Grades 1–8. The updated curriculum gives children a chance to learn more about their bodies and be open with each other and talk about what they feel and experience.
As we were taught many years ago, knowledge is power. The more informed people are about sex and the ins and outs (literally) of sexual health, consent and sexual orientation, the more open the discussion surrounding these important topics can be. Having an open dialogue with children about these topics is crucial to their growth and development.
Since Ford reinstated the 1998 sex-ed curriculum, there have been a number of school walkouts, rallies and protests led by students who oppose Ford’s move. Hashtags like #WeTheStudentsDoNotConsent and #WalkOutForOurEducation have made their way around on social media attracting tons of support and a fight for better sexual education from the updated curriculum. March For Our Education was also started by two grade 12 students to help spread awareness to others of the provincial crisis Ford has created.
According to a report from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, teenagers want and need unbiased and accurate information about sexual activity. “In 2005, 43 per cent of Canadian teens aged 15 to 19 reported that they had had sexual intercourse at least once. Eight per cent of teens reported having had sexual intercourse before they were 15 years old,” the report says. Most likely, this percentage has risen since the 2015 curriculum was introduced.
“Parents can support their children at home through open discussion of information about sex, and by reinforcing messages about condom use and other forms of birth control as well as around the risks of and social pressures related to sexual behaviour. Role-playing hypothetical situations can be a useful strategy.” The report also explains that students should find someone they feel comfortable and open to talk about these things with if they are not comfortable talking about them with their parents or vice versa.
With society experiencing numerous changes in the way we view sexual identity and gender, and online sexuality (sexting/dating apps), it is the most ideal and practical to accommodate current standards into the curriculum. The 1998 sex-ed curriculum failed us, let’s make sure we don’t fail our children.
