Carry on teaching
It’s been a rough week for students at Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park Public School, where parents pulled hundreds of kids out of classes to protest the province’s new sex education program.
There’s been vandalism, too. Thorncliffe and nearby Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy — a kindergarten-only school — were both defaced with graffiti saying “shame on you.”
But despite these tensions, Ontario has largely been spared the widespread protests that some feared as children returned to school this week.
In the end, the vast majority of parents recognized and supported the need for a new sex-ed curriculum and school has resumed largely without a hitch.
That’s good for Ontario’s students. And it vindicates Premier Kathleen Wynne’s decision not to buckle to pressure from the vocal minority who succeeded in deterring former premier Dalton McGuinty from introducing the new curriculum in 2010.
While the schools need to be attentive to parental concerns and flexible in teaching the new material, the province is on the right track. It helped, too, that the Wynne government went out of its way to consult with and educate parents on the new course materials.
In the end, kids need the crucial information the new course provides to protect and inform themselves. After all, the last time the sex-ed curriculum was updated was 17 years ago, when gay marriage was illegal, there were no smartphones, the word “sexting” had not been invented and the debate around “consent” barely existed.
The government was wise to debunk misunderstandings and misinformation, and then carry on with its plans to introduce this important new course material.