Health and Physical Education


Forward and Backward: Ontario #HPE Curriculum from 1998 to 2018.

It has been over two weeks since our new Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson (@LisaThompsonMPP, on Twitter) stated (six times) regarding Health and Physical Education, “in September, teachers will be using the 2014 curriculum.”  As yet, there has been no official directive issued from the Ministry of Education to school boards in this regard, and the current 2015 HPE curriculum remains posted on the Ministry of Education web site. We are now just 3 weeks out from Labour Day, and the pending return to school.

In fact, just today I noted the following posted to Twitter:

Thirty public school boards have now made public statements in response to the proposed roll-back, along with statements of support for the current 2015 curriculum from an additional 32 religious, legal, health and education organizations.  Check out the Statements on the Rollback of the HPE Curriculum as collated by Andrew Campbell (@acampbell99, on Twitter).

As uncovered in my previous post, Clarifying the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum, the curriculum in place in 2014 (March 25th, to be exact, as uncovered via The Wayback Machine) was The Ontario Curriculum, Health and Physical Education, Interim Edition, 2010 (revised). Were the Ministry of Education to follow through on their rollback to “the curriculum teachers were using in 2014,” one would assume that this would be the document they would reference. 

I decided it might be instructive to do a bit more digging and see if I could find the document that was released PRIOR to the Interim Edition, 2010 (Revised), given that the Interim Edition was the re-release of the 2010 (Revised) document that caused considerable consternation. 

Back to The Wayback Machine

A bit of poking around by paging backward on The Wayback Machine from edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/health showed that the first appearance of the previously controvertial 2010 (Revised) document occurred between December 2009 and January 2010.

Following the initial January 2010 release, the 2010 (Revised) document lived on the Ministry of Education website for a period of several months of calm, before a sudden condemnation caused a media fury in late April, and resulted in an abrupt about-face by then-Premier Dalton McGuinty. The 2010 (revised) document was withdrawn, and a couple months later the Interim Edition, 2010 (revised) appeared on the Ministry site. It is this curriculum version — essentially the 2010 Health and Physical Education document with the 2010 Human Development and Sexual Health section removed and the 1998 Growth and Development section inserted — that would be “the curriculum teachers were using in 2014.”

As part of this research, I came across a very interesting paper by David Rayside (University College, UT), presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Concordia University, Montreal, June 2010: Sex Ed In Ontario: Religious Mobilization and Socio-Cultural Anxiety. The paper documents in very significant detail the various pressures in play at the time and the significant work done during the period 2007-2009 in preparing the 2010 (Revised) version.

Here are only a couple of excerpts:

From the beginning these discussions included Catholic educators, who seemed no different from public system educators in the numbers of them calling for change in the sex education component to HPE. The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association had become an advocate for greater attention to LGBT issues, and did not shy away from advocating change in elementary schools. They recognized how much information students were getting about sex from outside the school, and most of them agreed that bullying and harassment based on sexual difference required concerted attention. There are no indications that Catholic educators consulted over the new curriculum were out of alignment with those public school educators who were calling for significant updating of the approach to sex education.

page 7, Sex Ed In Ontario: Religious Mobilization and Socio-Cultural Anxiety.

After the January 18th posting and distribution, silence followed. Many many people knew about the curriculum; thousands had been involved in consultations; hundreds of school board officials in both Catholic and public systems knew about it and then received copies of it in January. Some would already have sent the new curriculum through the system to ensure adequate preparation for September.

page 10, Sex Ed In Ontario: Religious Mobilization and Socio-Cultural Anxiety.

If you are interested in understanding (as I was) more of the background and behind-the-scenes political forces, I recommend the paper to your attention.  Suffice to say, this one paragraph says a lot: 

On the morning of April 20th, 2010, veteran anti-gay evangelical crusader Charles McVety issued a press release denouncing a new Ontario sex education curriculum, and calling for protest against it. Fifty-four hours later, Premier Dalton McGuinty withdrew what were seen the most controversial sections of the Health and Physicial Education document (HPE) for a “re-think.” This was an unusual and embarrassing reversal for a Liberal leader widely viewed as strategically canny.

Page 2, Sex Ed In Ontario: Religious Mobilization and Socio-Cultural Anxiety.

1998 to 2010 to 1998 to 2015 to 1998?

Now, it was interesting to note that I was unable to obtain an active link to the initial release from 2010 (Revised) document. Unlike the 1998, 2010 Interim Edition (revised), and 2015 (Revised) documents, the short-lived 2010 (Revised) document is not archived on The Wayback Machine.

However, the file name in the URL gave sufficient direction to lead me via a simple Google search (look for health18curr2010.pdf) to a copy of the actual document still available on a third-party website.

In trying to understand what was controversial enough to be withdrawn in 2010, and what might now be controversial in 2018 again three years after the implementation of the 2015 document, I have done a document-by-document comparison of the contested sections of the documents: 1998, 2010 (Revised), Interim Edition 2010 (Revised), and 2015 (Revised).

Forward and Backward: Ontario Health & Physical Education Curriculum from 1998 to 2018

You can click on the image above to get a full-screen view of the comparative PDF, but essentially there is clearly a forwards and backwards battle underway with the safety of Ontario’s children at stake. If the current government has its way and officially rescinds the 2015 curriculum, then the old Growth and Development section will once again be in force, throwing that component of Ontario Health education back to 1998.

That 62 stakeholder organizations, including The United Church of Canada Ministers, the Metropolitan Community Church, the Ontario Principals’ Council, The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, Registered Nurses Association Ontario, Anishinaabe Nation, Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, Ontario Public School Boards Association, Catholic Principals’ Council, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Ontario Federation of Home and School Associations, Association of Ontario Midwives, Ontario Physical and Health Educators’ Association, and 30 Ontario public school boards, have come out in support of keeping the 2015 curriculum should give this government serious pause before they send us back 20 years. 

Sadly, should Minister Lisa Thompson rise to the challenge and respond to the very real need to provide educators with greater clarity around the “2014” curriculum, she need only copy the text from either the first or third columns of the comparison table, and paste it into the fifth column, which I have relabeled in advance as “Ford/Thompson 2018.” 

With that simple act, coupled with a quick cover memo to the Directors of Education throughout Ontario, she would make her throwback 20 years to the 1998 curriculum complete.


Clarifying the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum 1

First, Watch This

Ontario’s new Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson (Huron-Bruce) (@LisaThompsonMPP) took slightly under three minutes today to attempt to address some questions surrounding her government’s confused messaging around the Health and Physical Education Curriculum.

My take-away from those three minutes were three continually restated messages (please forgive me if I misunderstood any of them, but I think her repetition helped with my summation):

Minister Thompson’s Three Messages:

  • “In September, teachers will be using the 2014 curriculum (6x). Teachers are going to be familiar with the curriculum because they utilized it in 2014. I have every confidence teachers will be using the curriculum from 2014, because they’re familiar with it.”
  • “(In the fall), we will embark on the most comprehensive consultation (5x) this province has ever seen when it comes to education. We made a campaign promise to respect parents …. and we’re going to be doing that. We heard from tens of thousands of people from across this province during the campaign that they were not consulted.”
  • “I encourage [Teachers] to become involved in the consultation (4x). I encourage anyone who wants to share their perspective to do so.”

Throughout the interview CityNews reporter attempted to get clarity from Minister Thompson regarding the actual “2014” curriculum (and/or the 1998 curriculum) and the Minister would only refer to “the 2014 curriculum/the curriculum used in 2014.”

So, how can we clarify “the 2014 Curriculum”?

Currently the only HPE curriculum available on the Ontario Ministry of Education website is the 2015 document:

It should be noted that this document is accompanied by a large collection of support documents including:

So, Where is “the 2014 Curriculum” ?

The Internet has come a long way in the last 20 years, and is a significant element in both influencing and understanding why a 1998 curriculum is out of date in 2018.  You can actually use the Internet to go back in time to specific dates via an archive called The Wayback Machine. So if you want to see what curriculum was on the Ontario Ministry of Education website on say, March 25th, 2014, you can!

edu.gov.on.ca from March 25th, 2014 via TheWaybackMachine, capture by @aforgrave

On March 25, 2014, the Health and Physical Education page listed two curriculum documents:

Despite significant consultation to arrive at the 2015 (revised) document, the Minister wants to return to what was in effect in the previous year, 2014. This would be the Interim Edition, 2010 (revised) curriculum.

So What Does the Interim Edition, 2010 (revised) document Say?

Page 32 of the Interim Edition, 2010 (revised) document makes clear why the document is so-labelled, and discusses what expectations Ontario educators are to address:

Growth and Development (1998). The Growth and Development expectations from the 1998 health and physical education curriculum have been included in this interim edition of the document pending further consultation on the expectations related to human development and sexual health that will be included in the final revised curriculum.

Throughout the 2010 document, the Growth and Development section (the contentious content within the Healthy Living strand that is coloquially labled “sex-ed”)  bounces educators, students, and parents back to what was in play in 1998.

Reading through the 2010 (Interim) document we see the restated “sex-ed” curriculum from 1998.

You can read all through the Interim Edition, 2010 (revised) document and see that the Growth and Development section remains unchanged from 1998.  It was, in fact, the need for additional consultation on the Growth and Development section in 2009-2010 that kept the Interim curriculum in place until it was approved following a comprehensive consultation undertaken by the Wynne Liberal government, culminating with the release of the 2015 (Revised) curriculum.

Aside from the same 3 documents supporting Daily Physical Activity in Schools going back to 2005, there are no other documents available in 2014. No parent guides, no grade-by-grade guides, no quick facts. So going back to 2014 would not only throw the 2015 Growth and Development strand back to 1998, but it would also remove access to all of those resource materials that parents and teachers have had access to since 2015.  Guides to topics such as Consent, Sexting, Mental Health, Concussions, and Staying Safe are new since 2014 — throwing them out is not in the interests of Ontario learners in 2018.

Parent Resources accessible in a multiple languages

Also of interest with the current 2015 curriculum is the inclusion of parent guides not only in English, but also Arabic, Chinese (traditional, simplified), Farsi, Korean, Polish, Punjabi, Somali, and Urdu.  There is no evidence of similar efforts to communicate with parents on the page from 2014 and backwards.  Removing resources to support Ontario’s diverse learning communities does not reflect well on the “government of the people” either.

The Minister of Education Needs Stop Obfuscating

That the Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson, refuses to acknowledge that her “2014 curriculum” regarding Growth and Development (“sex-ed”) is from 1998, is very problematic. We should expect open and transparent answers from our elected representatives, and her responses from July 26th and earlier are clearly avoiding the issue.

The People Respond

Although Lisa Thompson has said little with any clarity since the initial announcement of the curriculum rollback, there has been considerable response to date:

As of this date, 16 18 Ontario school districts and 19 Ontario religious, health, and educational organizations have openly replied with public statements in response to the government’s announced repeal. Ontario educator Andrew Campbell (@acampbell99, on Twitter) is compiling a list of Statements on the Rollback of the HPE Curriculum, and adding to it daily.

To date (July 27th): Toronto District School Board • Waterloo Region District School Board • Trent-Valley District School Board • Peel District School Board • Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board • Trillium Lakelands District School Board • Grand Erie District School Board • Bluewater District School Board • York Region District School Board • Durham District School Board • Halton District School Board • District School Board of Ontario North East • Ottawa-Carleton District School Board • Lambton Kent District School Board • Upper Grand District School Board • Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board • Simcoe County District School Board • Limestone District School Board • The United Church of Canada Ministers • The 519 • Next Gen Men • Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights • Ontario Principals’ Council • Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario • Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada • Registered Nurses Association Ontario • Sherbourne Health Centre • The Ontario Association of Home and School Associations, Inc. • Anishinaabe Nation • Association of Ontario Midwives • Faculty at Trent University’s School of Education • Prof. Lauren Bialystok (OISE/UT) • Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association • Ontario Physical and Health Education Association • Ontario Association for the Support of Physical and Health Educators •  Canadian Pediatric Association • Ontario Public School Boards Association • The Women Abuse Council of Toronto

Where Will You Stand?

If you are an Ontario educator or parent, where do you stand? Where does your Board of Education stand? How will you participate? 

 

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Attribution:

The video at the opening of this post has been embedded from the original source, Education Minister gives confusing interview about sex-ed curriculum (July 26, CityNews)