|
|
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/09/08/wynne-wrong-about-sex-ed-consultation
September 08, 2015
It would be nice if parents upset about Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum, including those keeping their children out of school, could rely on at least one thing Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is telling them. But they can’t.
Wynne said her government consulted widely with parents about the contents of the curriculum. It did not.
We now know, thanks to a freedom of information request made available to the Toronto Sun, that more than half of the 4,000 parents — one from every elementary school — the government says it consulted with via an online survey, never responded to it.
And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had since, as my Sun colleague Anthony Furey reported Sunday, the questions were massaged to encourage positive responses, without getting into the nitty-gritty of what would be taught.
This includes children learning about the correct names for sexual body parts in Grade 1, lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation in Grade 3, discussions about masturbation in Grade 6 and about sexual activity in Grade 8.
Education Minister Liz Sandals has said repeatedly parents can withdraw their children from any course content they find objectionable, but individual school boards have said children will not be excused from certain aspects of the sex-ed curriculum.
Sandals’ promise is an any event a hollow one, since the sex-ed curriculum isn’t a specific course taught on specific days.
It’s part of a larger curriculum on health and physical education in which it will be very difficult for parents to determine when content they might find objectionable is being taught to their children.
The timing will vary from school board to school board and indeed from school to school, further undermining the ability of parents to determine what is being taught and when.
Both Wynne and Sandals claim widespread support exists for their new sex-ed curriculum, but that flies in the face of reality.
A Forum poll in May found the public deeply divided on the sex-ed curriculum, with 42% supporting it, 40% opposed and 17% undecided.
In fact, the Liberals have bungled the implementation of their sex-ed curriculum ever since Wynne’s predecessor, Dalton McGuinty introduced it in 2010.
At that time, McGuinty backed down in the face of widespread public opposition, saying the government hadn’t consulted widely enough with parents and would go back to the drawing board.
But the curriculum the Liberals are now introducing is virtually the same as the one McGuinty withdrew in 2010.
Wynne has said many of its critics are motivated by homophobia and the Liberals have also blamed religious fundamentalists from various faiths for stirring up opposition to the bill.
In other words, contrary to McGuinty’s position in 2010 that it was the Liberal government that didn’t to do its job properly by failing to consult widely enough before introducing the sex-ed curriculum, the Wynne government in 2015 argues it’s the critics of its sex-ed curriculum who are at fault.
Wynne and the Liberals make a valid point in noting Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum hasn’t been updated since 1998, long before problems like sexting and Internet cyber-bullying became a reality.
But that doesn’t excuse the ham-fisted way they’ve introduced this curriculum, nor the politically dishonest way in which they did it.
|
|
狗仔卡
发表于 2015-9-10 10:58:54
收藏
顶
踩
提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
喧嚣卡
变色卡
显身卡
楼主