No,
it’s not dirty talk — just straight talk on sex, sexting, body parts, consent,
mental health, and other life (or life-saving) skills for kids.
“When
Canadian public elementary students are considerate systematically at the
bottom in the world on standardized tests.” The Premier Minister of Ontario revealed: the
updating in sexual education in elementary schools students in Ontario that
both need: for recognizing students in public elementary schools at
the Top of the World! Mrs. Kathleen Wynne instead to bring sex
education to the classrooms in a premature edge, by involving six years old
students, the duty of the Premier of Ontario is to reform the curriculum of
public elementary education schools in Ontario, from grade 1 to 8 with a
quality instruction in the general subjects. The question is Mrs. Premier of
Ontario: elementary students of public schools from grade 1 to 6 in the need to
learn to read and write correctly; are ready to understand and respond to your
implemented and updated sexual education? Besides elementary school students not
only are struggling with reading and writing
skills also are experiencing a very serious difficulties with other subjects as
mathematics, geography, history… and your first concern is to bring to the classrooms
your exigent plan of sexuality to innocent six years old children! The provincial
parliament plan of evil malice against small school children have to be
reviewed by the province of Ontario parents. Also it’s the appropriate moment to
ask the Premier of Ontario for a full investigation about the mental, physical,
and sexual abuse of school children in Ontario for part of the Board of
Education Staff.
No,
it’s not dirty talk — just straight talk on sex, sexting, body parts, consent,
mental health, and other life (or life-saving) skills for kids.
Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto
Star Order this photo
Premier Kathleen Wynne is finally
implementing an updated sex-ed curriculum for Ontario schools. She oversaw the
reforms as education minister in 2010, but they were shelved by then-premier
Dalton McGuinty for political reasons.
A new sex-education curriculum, to
be revealed Monday, will be the talk — and the teaching — in our schools
starting this September.
It’s about time. Five years after
capitulating to a contrived outcry from political and social conservatives, the
Liberal government is finally modernizing our embarrassingly outdated sex-ed
curriculum.
This time, sources say, there will
be no backing down from the badly needed update.
Two separate documents obtained by
the Star — a revamped 240-page Health and Physical Education curriculum for
Grades 1 to 8, and a new 218-page volume for Grades 9 to 12 — will roll out
sex-ed material that isn’t so much explicit as explanatory.
No, it’s not dirty talk — just
straight talk on sex, sexting, body parts, consent, mental health, and other
life (or life-saving) skills for girls and boys. The idea is for teachers to
inoculate students against the ways of the world before they surf the world wild
web on their own.
Our children deserve to learn it all
in classrooms, not be lured in lurid chat rooms.
Yes, children will be taught at an
early age that there is something called a penis. Also a vagina. Get used to it
— Grade 1 kids already are, and child-abuse investigators have long been
calling for it.
In Grade 6, the words “vaginal
lubrication” will be up for discussion. Yes, there is talk of “wet dreams.” And
if kids ask about masturbation in class, yes, the optional “teacher prompt”
advises that it “is not harmful and is one way of learning about your body.”
(Nothing in the preceding paragraph
is part of the official curriculum or obligatory for teachers. The material is
included as optional guidelines, recognizing that many kids are taught sex-ed
by phys-ed teachers who are juggling other roles and appreciate the
professional support.)
Older students will hear the words
“oral sex” — hopefully (and then thankfully) before they ever experience it, so
they can learn why sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are rising. For
similar reasons, anal sex is discussed in later grades — no, not encouraged,
but questions answered.
THE GOVERNMENT ABUSED ABORIGINAL CHILDREN!!!
Here’s a shocker for people who
assume the worst about sex-ed: Grade 7 students will be taught about “delaying
sexual activity,” notably “choosing to abstain from any genital contact;
choosing to abstain from having vaginal or anal intercourse; choosing to
abstain from having oral-genital contact … the reasons for not engaging in
sexual activity; the concept of consent and how consent is communicated.”
Here’s a prompt for Grade 7 teachers
dealing with 12- and 13-year-olds if the issue arises in the classroom:
“Engaging in sexual activities like oral sex, vaginal intercourse, and anal
intercourse means that you can be infected with an STI.”
Is all that best left unsaid, in
hopes of leaving well enough alone? Only if parents are prepared to live with
the consequences — confusing their personal religious faith with blind faith in
teenage behaviour.
While opponents fulminate about the
mere mention of body parts, body language plays an expanded role in the
curriculum, as students learn to read signals while vocalizing their feelings.
There is new material for students about the ins and outs of sexual consent —
the importance of standing up for yourself instead of going to bed with
someone. That means teaching kids to assert themselves rather than remain
silent, and to respect one another.
For all the looming hysteria,
hypocrisy and hyperbole from hypersensitive critics, the updated curriculum
isn’t all about sex or sexuality.
It includes badly needed material on
the plague of cyberbullying that we’ve seen destroy the lives of vulnerable
kids as traditional toilet-stall vulgarisms go viral online.
In a prompt for Grade 5 students,
here’s a suggested response for teachers: “Sharing private sexual photos or
posting sexual comments online is unacceptable and also illegal.”
Teaching materials on mental health,
previously relegated to older grades, will now be introduced in Grade 9,
because the experts thought it more in line with the times.
There is more information on drug
abuse that would be irrelevant to younger kids, and more detail about sexual
orientation.
The background to this
back-to-school curriculum is the research from hundreds of experts in sexual
health and pedagogy — no, pedophiliacs weren’t involved — that even as pregnancy rates are declining, STIs are on
the increase.
Turns out we are better at
preventing babies than protecting kids, who suffer from more disease than
before because we’ve stuck to the status quo. Our existing curriculum is circa
1998, while other provinces have kept up with the sex-ed times to the point
that many Ontario teachers now rely on conservative Alberta’s curriculum as a
resource.
Premier Kathleen Wynne is determined
to go where Dalton McGuinty didn’t dare. When critics pounced, he renounced —
shelving Wynne’s work as the education minister who oversaw the 2010 reforms.
Fearful of a pre-election fight ahead of the 2011 campaign, her predecessor as
premier buckled under pressure — and failed this simple classroom test:
Stick to the facts. Stand by the
research.
Nearly two decades after Ontario’s
last curriculum update — long before broadband reached every home, smartphones
invaded every teenager’s pocket, and cyberbullies pushed aside schoolyard
bullies — Ontario is belatedly recognizing the Internet age. And the age of puberty.
A parent guide to the curriculum, to
be released online Monday, notes that girls “usually enter puberty sometime
between 8 and 13 years of age,” while for boys it ranges from 9 to 14. That’s
why the updated curriculum now introduces some of those more puberty-related
topics in Grade 4, rather than Grade 5.
The political and pedagogical
stakes are high. Wynne is putting her personal credibility on the line as the
government braces for the inevitable backlash from an unholy alliance of social
and political conservatives — right wing opposition opportunists and
fundamentalists who are trying to distort science to fit their distorted views
of religion.
It’s about biology, not ideology.
But there is a Progressive
Conservative leadership race underway in which all three remaining candidates
have discredited and even disgraced themselves by pandering to parents using code language and deceptive rhetoric.
Opponents claim they don’t oppose
sex education, just that parents should teach it at home — which sounds
suspiciously like a home-schooling recipe for unravelling any class-based
curriculum. And assumes that kids would cheerfully absorb parental lectures on
the perils of oral sex (or that teenagers heed their parents about anything).
Some of the more opportunistic
politicians from the Official Opposition say they support sex-ed, they just
want more parental involvement — or as leadership candidate Monte McNaughton argues, while boasting of his credentials as the father of an 18-month-old
— parents should “be at the table.”
Apparently it’s not enough that the
government consulted hundreds of experts, educators, and religious bodies,
reached out to parents from the more than 4,000 elementary schools across
Ontario, have massive support from teachers and their unions in all school
boards, and that public opinion polls show more than 9 in 10 parents are
broadly supportive.
It’s worth noting that the
influential Institute for Catholic Education — an umbrella group comprising the Assembly of Catholic
Bishops, Catholic trustees, principals, teachers and parents — has been
consulted throughout the development of the updated curriculum. It’s also worth
noting that the institute describes itself as “animated by the Gospel and
reflecting the tenets of the Catholic faith.”
Hard to argue with that fidelity to
research and religious faith.
But many still will, loudly and
politically. The curriculum’s opponents should do their homework, lest they
fall behind their own kids.
Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and
Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca ,
Twitter: @reggcohn
