TORONTO, February 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Wynne government will release its new sex-ed curriculum, which has faced widespread controversy over fears that it will prematurely sexualize young children, on Monday.
Earlier this week, Premier Kathleen Wynne had told the legislature that the much-derided consultation on the curriculum was over and the program would be released “within weeks.”
But the Canadian Press has obtained an internal email that Toronto District School Board Director of Education Donna Quan sent trustees on Friday announcing it will come first thing on Monday.
The “revised health and physical education curriculum, grades 1-12, will be released by the Ministry of Education Monday, Feb. 23,” wrote Quan.
“Today directors or designates are receiving information related to key changes in the curriculum and are discussing plans for implementation,” she added. “Parent resources are being developed to respond to questions.”
The news agency also reports that Education Minister Liz Sandals will hold a press conference on the curriculum changes Monday morning.
The changes come after a failed attempt at introducing updates to the 1998 curriculum under then-Premier Dalton McGuinty in 2010, while Wynne served as education minister.
That version, which began discussing genitalia in grade one, homosexuality in grade 3, masturbation in grade 6, and anal and oral sex in grade 7, was pulled after widespread backlash from parents.
The new curriculum is expected to be an edited version of the 2010 program, and many critics fear it could be even more radical. Wynne and Sandals have already indicated it will discuss sexual “consent” beginning in grade one.
The rollout has also been mired in controversy because of its ties to former deputy education minister Benjamin Levin, who oversaw the curriculum’s development in 2010 under Wynne as the province’s top education bureaucrat.
Levin has said he will plead guilty next month to possessing child pornography, creating written child pornography, and counseling a sexual assault. On the latter charge, he has admitted that he asked a mother, who turned out to be an undercover police officer, “to sexually assault her child for him.”
