By Alisa Howlett [1]
BELLEVILLE – Local organizations say that adding consent to Ontario’s sex-education curriculum [3] will be beneficial to both students and teachers.
Premier Kathleen Wynne [4] recently called on Education Minister Liz Sandals [5] to revise Ontario’s sex-education curriculum. More current topics such as consent, internet safety and social media, and gender inequality are to be introduced.
Elementary and secondary schools in the Belleville area often turn to the nurses at the local health unit [6] to teach their health classes.
“It is absolutely important to teach kids about consent,” said Beth Shaw, a registered nurse at the Hastings and Prince Edward Counties Health Unit. Shaw is one of the nurses who teaches in schools on a regular basis.
Young people must know their bodies and be able to communicate their boundaries to others and also ask about the boundaries of others, Shaw said. She added that young people also need to be aware of the laws in regards to sexual intercourse.
A few years ago Loyalist College [7] hosted a campaign called Don’t Be That Guy [8]. The goal was to educate students on “bar etiquette” and raise awareness around anti-violence and date rape. Lisa Warriner, the director of Victim Services [9] in Belleville who sees victims of sexual assault and violence regularly, led the campaign.
If university and college students still need to be taught about what is acceptable in regards to boundaries then the teaching should start at a younger age, she said. If children aren’t taught about consent and what is acceptable in relationships when they’re in elementary school, then by the time they get to high school and enter in relationships it is almost too late, Warriner added.
Warriner says it is especially essential to target children when studies done in the past have revealed unnerving statistics. She’s referring to An Analysis of Violence Against Women: A Manual for Educators and Administrators [10] by Helen Lenskyi.
The study found that 60 per cent of Canadian college-aged males said they would commit sexual assault if they were certain they would not get caught.
Changes to the sex-education curriculum were proposed in 2010, but then dismissed after pushback from a few religious groups and parents. This go-round, parents had a say.
“The government recently conducted a survey [11] that gave parents of children in elementary schools across the province, from all four publicly-funded boards, the opportunity to provide input during this process,” Gary Wheeler, senior media relations coordinator of the Ontario Ministry of Education, said in an email.
“The feedback received from parents indicates an understanding of the increase in usage of social media and lack of awareness of internet safety among children and youth. They acknowledged that the realities students face today is different from the situations reflected in the current curriculum.”
The current curriculum is from the 1998, making it the most outdated in the country.
Youth get mixed messages through social media and the media. If consent and healthy relationships isn’t being taught in school, where else are students going to get the accurate information? Warriner asked.
Students are asking about hot button topics more than they ever did, Shaw said. And it’s not that students aren’t being taught about consent now, but teachers need to be able to answer students’ questions within the context of the curriculum in a way that’s agreeable to parents as well. With the updated curriculum teachers will have easy access to this information and be able to do this, she added.
Changes will be introduced within the next two months. The updated curriculum will be into full effect in September 2015.