Gender Studies Course - Reflections on March 16th

In reference to the Ontario proposed Gender Studies curriculum, I can definitely understand where both sides are coming from.

On the one side, times have changed and therefore education needs to change in order to address these differences. And with all of the media we have available now, students are having all kinds of images and ideas thrown at them. So maybe the schools do need to step in and organize these ideas for students in such a way that they can explore them in a safe environment. Upon looking through the proposed curriculum, I found that there was a lot of valuable information in there. Information that may directly help students in their lives (when they enter the work force, when they get married, when they have children, etc.).

On the flip side, I can also see why there is some resistance to implementing this document. While some of the objectives could be seen as "non-disputable" (basically seen by the majority of Canadians as "right" - ie. violence prevention), there are many objectives that are not accepted by many people. Topics like abortion, homosexuality, transgener/transsexuality, and just plain old sexuality are not agreed upon by everybody as being right, one way or the other. Even aspects of gender equity - the woman's "place" or roles versus the man's "place" or roles are not seen as the same across the board. Some religions and/or cultures believe they should be equal while some believe that each sex has specific roles.

So the condundrum is, of course, which side is right? Obviously there will never be a consensus. And I can see why this course is being resisted in the Catholic schools. I was curious about what kind of response it got from the non-Catholic schools.

In Lana, Brad and Chelsea's presentation last class on Social Studies, they mentioned that the Social Studies curriculum is meant to be taught without bias. Personally, I would hope that some aspects of this gender course would be as well. I do think that the majority of the material is important for our students to learn, and much of it should be taught with a bias (once again, violence!!), but I do think that there are some aspects that should be taught with an unbiased approach (such as abortion, homosexuality, etc.). This is only because there is still such a split on topics such as these, and what right does anybody have to say that one side is wrong?

If I were a parent, I would have no problem with this course being taught as long as some of these sensitive issues were presented with both "sides" in mind and the teachers didn't lean towards one way or the other in their presentation of material. If parents are concerned, then this would be a good opportunity to get involved in what their children are learning at school by bringing the material into discussions at home as well. However, sadly, in this day and age (there I go sounding like a ninety year old woman again!) many parents are not involved in their child's education. So I think a course like this is extremely important. Some believe schools should just stick to the basics (good old reading, writing and arithmatic), but if parents and communities/societies in general are failing to teach everything else at home (values, morals, etc.), then, in order to make an attempt at changing the downward spiral in which our communities have fallen into I think the schools do need to step in. I think it is sad. But true.