Ontario's recent education history: from diversity to radical sex education

Parents protesting the sex education curriculum

In order to connect the dots and better understand Ontario's recent education history about Equity and Diversity, we must see where we presently are and how did we get here. We begin with the 2009 policy document called Realizing the Promise: Ontario's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy. The government's aim is made clear with this statement:

The presence of a wide range of human qualities and attributes within a group, organization, or society. The dimensions of diversity include, but are not limited to, ancestry, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, language, physical and intellectual ability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status.

The idea of accepting diversity through gender, gender equity and sexual orientation runs through the entire document. The government argued that the policy was needed to make Ontario schools safe and free of bullying and anti-oppression. At the time, a false crisis was manufactured so that the most important educational issue was to have safe and "inclusive" schools for all students and teachers. The mainstream media went along. The idea was spread throughout the province's 31 public boards and 29 Catholic boards by a government Equity team. By 2011, most boards fell like a house of cards and were eager to approve Equity education for a government that had given them billions for all day kindergarten.  (more...)

Ontario's recent education history: from diversity to radical sex education