Is sex-ed battle really about kids?
Political dust-up has gone on too long
Ontario politicians embroiled in the heated and unproductive debate over the province’s sex-ed curriculum need to step back and ask themselves a simple question: Is this really about the kids or is it all politics?
NDP leader Andrea Horwath and a flock of progressive commentators claim that reverting to a former version of the curriculum will put children’s health and safety at real risk because it won’t tell them about things like sexting, cyber-bullying and consent.
Those who don’t like the new curriculum say it fills kids’ heads with information about oral and anal sex, and gender identity, information that is delivered at too young an age and is not in accord with some parents’ values.
Both sides have a point, but one has to observe that the curriculum the Progressive Conservative government is temporarily reverting to was in place from 1998 to 2015.
If it was really so terribly dangerous, why did it take the highly progressive Liberal government so many years to replace it? Similarly, the new curriculum has been in place for three years. Some parents don’t like it, but has it really harmed their children?
What we have here is a minor dispute over some elements of the curriculum, but the NDP has turned it into an opportunity to portray the PCs as social conservative puppets.
Horwath says Premier Doug Ford is being given his orders by “far-right social conservatives” and “radical extremists like Tanya Granic Allen and Charles McVety.” Granic Allen is a parent activist who sought the leadership of the PC Party, and McVety is an evangelical Christian and longtime foe of the Liberal sex-ed curriculum.
Horwath paints a lurid picture, but there is no doubt Ford promised to review the curriculum to curry favour with social conservatives, both during his leadership race and during the election. What those voters got was the promise of a consultation and review. Ford is keeping that promise, but it’s unlikely the revised PC version of the curriculum will be wildly dissimilar from the Liberal version.
That new version covers many topics that weren’t part of our reality back in 1998 and should be discussed in the schools. What’s more, most people support it. The PCs are likely to tweak the curriculum, but not make fundamental changes. No one is arguing that our schools should remain stuck in the last century.
None of that has stopped the sex-ed consultation’s critics from portraying the PC action as if it were a plot line from The Handmaid’s Tale.
If the NDP wanted to be constructive, it would ask the government to zero in on the sections of the curriculum it thinks are problematic, put those on hold, and leave the rest in place while it consults with parents. That’s what should have been done by the PCs.
While we contemplate whether the PCs are monsters who don’t care about children, it’s worth remembering that the “new” curriculum would have been in effect back in 2010 if noted educational progressive Dalton McGuinty hadn’t given in to the same kind of social conservative pressures. No one could argue that the former premier was captive to radical extremists, but he and his advisers determined that the issue was not worth the expenditure of diminishing political capital.
The Liberals were not adroit in managing the curriculum change. First, they caved in. Then, they brought in changes that failed to take into account some parents’ concerns. That’s why we are still talking about the issue now.
Ford promises the biggest curriculum consultation in Ontario history. Parents who don’t like the way sexed is taught now, and they aren’t all so-con radicals, will have every opportunity to be heard, at last. That doesn’t mean they will get everything they want, but it’s the best way to resolve an issue that has dragged on far too long.