A group of educators is raising money for a public campaign that will pressure the Ontario government to update the province's health and sex education curriculum, which they say is the most outdated in Canada.
Students in Ontario are learning from a 15-year-old sex and physical education program that is "well behind" the standards set by other provinces, Ophea, a non-profit group that advises on health and physical education, said in a statement Thursday.
"Not providing kids with the tools they need in hopes that they will not be faced with difficult decisions or situations is unethical and potentially harmful," Chris Markham, the executive director and CEO of Ophea, said in a video posted on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo.
Ophea aims to raise $200,000 by Nov. 8, and says money raised from the crowdfunding campaign will go towards placing public service announcements intended to provide “straightforward information” on what an updated curriculum would include. The ads will be placed in newspapers across Ontario.
"The challenge is that Ontarians aren't receiving accurate information about the curriculum," associate dean at the University of Brock and past president of Ophea Dr. James Mandigo said in a statement. "We need to separate the facts from fiction."
As of Thursday morning, the group had raised $395.
Ophea says the Ontario government is delaying the release of an updated sex-ed curriculum shelved by the province's Ministry of Education since 2010.
The group says the sex-ed component of the new health and physical education curriculum for elementary-school aged students was taken out in April 2010 after “misinformation” about the program was spread by some media and a “small minority of individuals.” A few months later, the updated health and physical education program for high school students was dropped in its entirety by the ministry.
"If this curriculum is not finalized for the 2014/2015 school year, a full cohort of students will graduate in 2015 without ever having had the benefit of learning from an updated, current, research-based curriculum," Markham said.
Ophea says 93 per cent of Ontario parents and a coalition of over 50 medical and educational groups supported the updated health and physical education curriculum.