It's Education, Not Dirty Talk

Ontario will get it's long awaited revamp to the "health and physical education curriculum for grades 1 - 12. The changes are long overdue and expected to be well received by most in Ontario. I am very pleased to see these changes. Kudos Premier Wynne.

The Minister of Education, Liz Sandals vowed this morning that this will be the curriculum ...

The minister promising not to back down is a good one and you might think it weird for a minister to make such a comment. Well, she had too. The last time the Liberals introduced changes to this curriculum, they backed down when a small group of evangelical and conservative politicians made a big noise.

The media will be telling us of the groundswell of opposition to these changes. They will be wrong. I suspect an overwhelming majority of folks in Ontario still support these changes, even if its five years after first proposed.

Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star gets it ...

"It's not dirty talk," Regg Cohn

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.

and this

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. 

There will be many complaints from the few about a lack of consultation, They will be wrong again. Just remember the noise is only deafening because it is amplified.

PressProgress does a good job of taking apart the case made by Campaign Pro Life in this link

Pro-life group fears “gay agenda” will plant ideas in the minds of Ontario's school kids

The New Curriculum can be found here 

Regg Cohn's article here

And the noise makers (Lifesite, Campaign Life Coalition )