Michelle Hutchinson Grondin, PhD
On February 23, 2015, Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals announced revisions to provincial sexual education program, which includes teachers explaining “gender expression” in grade five, masturbation in grade six, the hazards of sexting in grade seven, and same-sex relationships in grade eight. [1] Even though the Ontario curriculum had not been updated since 1998, the Liberal government met intense opposition to the proposed modifications. Premier Kathleen Wynne was criticized by MPP Monte McNaughton of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario who argued that “It’s not the premier of Ontario’s job, especially Kathleen Wynne, to tell parents what’s age appropriate for their children.”[2] While tensions flared at Queen’s Park, protestors clamored outside the legislature. Participants included members of the Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion group, and the Roman Catholic group Parents as First Educators. Despite these protests, the curriculum was implemented in the fall of 2015. The decision to move ahead with the new curriculum can be contrasted with the Dalton McGuinty government’s revised sexual instruction guidelines in 2010, when vocal religious conservative minorities successfully prevented the Liberals from up-dating the sexual education program.[3]
While the press reported rather exclusively on both the 2015 and 2010 controversies, little was said on the history of sexual education in Ontario schools. This absence was blatantly clear when Thames Valley District School Board superintendent Don MacPherson observed that, “there will always be an element of parents that won’t be happy. But we’ve been teaching sexuality in Ontario’s schools for 50 years.”[4] MacPherson, however, was mistaken, because the subject has actually been taught in Ontario schools since at least 1905, when missionary and English professor Arthur Beall travelled to schools and taught boys that masturbation drained their “life fluid,” and the importance of Christian values and morality.[5] From 1925 to 1933, the Ontario Health Department employed Agnes Haygarth, a social service nurse, to travel across rural Ontario and give lectures on health to public school children. She showed students films on health, and mainly taught girls, unless there were no male health officers available to talk to the boys.[6] Continue reading →
