Students, 40,000 of them, from over 70 high schools across the province of Ontario, walked-out of class today to protest the new Conservative government‘s changes to the revised Sex Education curriculum.
“Youth showing up for youth”
Rayne Fisher-Wilson, a grade 12 student in Toronto, who was one of the organizers of today’s walk-out, told the CBC’s News Network that the protest was about “Youth showing up for youth”.
She said, “this is an example of us wanting to create a better world for ourselves and a better future for all of us to live in”.
Fisher-Wilson said she remembers being in grade nine, when students are generally 13 or 14 years of age, and hearing about things she had never heard of before and how it opened up a “whole different world” for her.
“There were girls in my class who were like, ‘I never knew what consent meant’, before they learned it in class.” Fisher-Wilson explained.
In 2015, the previous Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne, a former Education Minister, revised the Sex Ed curriculum to be more up to date with the realities students were living at home and at school.
From discussions of LGBTQ issues of identity and gender, to issues of consent, and the challenges and dangers of the internet, sexting and cyber-bullying, the new curriculum covered it all.
Student walk-out participants, from left, Quinn Jeffery-Off, Zella James and Anna Barber left their Glebe Collegiate High School, (in the background) this afternoon in protest of the curriculum changes. (Brett Throop/CBC)
There was a great deal of criticism when it was introduced in 2015, but supporters stressed that it was age-appropriate junior to senior levels.
Little children would be introduced to the idea that some classmates might have two moms, or dads, in keeping with the laws in Canada that have allowed same sex marriage since 2005.
Several parents, feeling that sex education was best taught at home, went to the extreme of removing their children from the public school system, but not much was heard about the update until the recent election in Ontario.
When Doug Ford was elected Premier of the province, on June 7, 2018, he soon named Lisa Thompsonas education minister. In July he announced that the Sex Education curriculum would revert back to the 1998 version, while another new version was being written.
“I know girls who were sexually active, who were even pregnant in grade seven”
As Frank Hong, a grade 12 student and executive director of today’s walk-out, pointed out in another interview with CBC’s News Network, none of the children in Ontario’s school system today were even born in 1998.
Many teachers and educators have protested the move, with some saying they would continue to teach from the new curriculum, using their professional judgement and discretion.
A relative compromise was reached when it was decided the new curriculum would continue to be taught in high schools, but not in elementary schools.
“A lot of people say that the stuff in the 2015 curriculum was being taught too early, and that was a lot of people’s issue with it, but I know girls who were sexually active, who were even pregnant in grade seven, and that’s what happens when you don’t have that education.” Rayne Fisher-Quann said.
And many other parents, educators and health-care workers are still opposing this move as the reformed curriculum was developed in a way that for example, named body parts in accurate and age-appropriate ways, to better help children who might be vicitms of sexual abuse.
The protest today was also condemning the Ontario government’s decision to cancel the re-write of the Indigenous curriculum.
