Developing Curriculum and Capacity for Sex Education
I.
Did you know that students in Ontario are being taught with a 15-year old Sex Education curriculum?
Ontario's Health and Physical Education (H&PE) Curriculum is supposed to cover: "a broad range of topics including healthy eating, physical activity, substance use, mental health and sexual health. This curriculum is intended to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to live and promote a healthy active lifestyle now and in the future."
In 2010, the Ministry of Education released a long-overdue update to the 1998 edition of the H&PE curriculum. However, after only 3 days of public and political outcry, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty was forced to shelve the updated H&PE curriculum and revert back to H&PE, circa 1998.
Parents and religious leaders objected to plans in the updated H&PE curriculum to teach:
- 1st graders to identify our body parts, including male and female genitalia
- 3rd graders about visible and invisible differences, including gender identity and sexual orientation
- 6th graders about masturbation, as a common, pleasurable, and not harmful way to learn about our bodies, and
- 7th graders about oral and anal intercourse, as behaviours that may involve risks for passing sexually transmitted infections.
Among advocates for the updated H&PE curriculum, there are concerns, besides a desire to teach comprehensive Sex Education for the 21st century, that the outdated H&PE curriculum was "written well before important issues like cyberbullying and child and youth mental health were on most people's radar".
Current-Premier Kathleen Wynne has promised to reintroduce the still-controversial H&PE curriculum (she fought for modernizing the sexual education component of H&PE back in 2010, as a member of McGuinty's cabinet) and Ophea and 50 provincial and national organizations are still waiting for the Government of Ontario to finalize and release the updated H&PE curriculum.
II.
In Jamaica, the Ministry of Education has reminded schools that Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) is a core subject, starting at the early childhood level. Education Minister Ronald Thwaites recently announced that a revised HFLE curriculum will be distributed to all schools at the start of the new school year. The Education Minister says all material in the curriculum are "age-appropriate and sensitive to the traditional beliefs and practices of the Jamaican Society".
But, why was Jamaica's HFLE curriculum revised? It's the same story as the H&PE in Ontario!
The HFLE curriculum was shelved for the whole of the 2012, after controversy erupted around the content of the "sexuality and sexual health" unit for grades 7-9. Parents and teachers objected to specific materials in the updated HFLE curriculum, of which the Education Minister said he was not made aware of initially, and then later deemed "inappropriate for any age" and also suggested they were "promoting homosexuality."
Thanks to the reportage of the Jamaica Gleaner, you can actually review some of the offending materials and decide whether or not a personal risk assessment tool that asks students to think about their sexual behaviour and risk for HIV infection, a guided imagery activity which asks students to imagine a world in which heterosexuals are the minority, or a questionnaire that reverses common stereotypes about homosexuals is age-appropriate or problematic.
The Gleaner also published an editorial from an HIV and health educator, which emphasized that the HFLE curriculum is supposed to focus on developing life skills. Therefore, the personal risk assessment tool aims to "build the students' critical thinking, decision making and healthy self-management and refusal skills," while the guided imagery and questionnaire activities aim to "build empathy and self-awareness skills... [rather than] 'make students homosexual' [and] address intolerance and its consequences, including bullying and abuse of students because of sexual orientation."
However, based on the Education Minister's comments, it is likely that the life skills component will be retained, while any controversial content will not be included in the revised HFLE curriculum.
Either way, advocates in Jamaica will continue to raise awareness of the gaps that remain in realizing sexual and reproductive health rights for adolescents and youth in Jamaica, including recognition of diversity, an enabling legal and socio-cultural environment, access to youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services and comprehensive sex education.
III.
When I started my internship at the Kingston YMCA in the role of reproductive health facilitator, I didn't have one curriculum to teach from. Well, that's not really true - I had many. Some were from Jamaica, some were from Canada, and there were always many online resources waiting to be Google'd. I even sought out a copy of the previous HFLE curriculum, to see what all the controversy was about.
My first job was that of any new teacher: to decide what was useful from each of these curriculums and start to craft my own lesson plans. The goal was to identify age-appropriate and culturally-appropriate ways of sharing knowledge for reproductive health, and like the educator who wrote in to the Gleaner, my approach also included a focus on developing life skills.
With every different group that I worked with, I had to assess what would be age-appropriate or culturally-appropriate in order to determine what information would be interesting or useful to share. Most of my sessions began with a brainstorm or activity to elicit participation, which offered clues as to the level of knowledge and maturity of the group. I was told early on that some of the participants I would work with were very "exposed" for their age - in other words, they were more likely to be sexually experienced or interested in their sexual and reproductive health - and not to censor what I shared in my sessions. With some groups, the norms around gender and sexual orientation were very rigid, while others were more open-minded and tolerant.
Now that my internship is soon coming to a close, it is important to share what I have learned with my colleagues at the Kingston YMCA so that they can continue to provide reproductive health and life skills education to the youth in our programs. Besides having an accurate and comprehensive knowledge base to teach from, teachers - in Canada, in Jamaica, and at the Kingston YMCA - still need to be able to deliver the curriculum. Some teachers already have the ability to make reproductive health content interesting, interactive, and inclusive, while others may need to adapt their teaching style or check-in with their values around sexuality.
I know there is still work to be done with the HP&E curriculum in Ontario, HFLE in Jamaica, and the Reproductive Health programme at the Kingston YMCA. For all three, I am hopeful for the best, come September, and I will be sure to continue to support them in any way I can!
