THUNDER BAY – Students at high schools across the city are outraged at Premier Doug Ford’s promise to roll back the 2015 sexual education curriculum in favour of one created 20 years ago.
They’re also upset at proposed changes to the Indigenous curriculum.
Dozens of students from each of the five Thunder Bay high schools walked out in anger on Friday, taking to the sidewalks in protest, waving banners and chanting things like “Two, four, six, eight, Doug Ford does not educate” at passing motorists.
Sixteen-year-old Jordyn Calderon, a Grade 11 student at Superior Collegiate and Vocational Institute, said students won’t stand for LGBTQ issues being cut from sex-ed classes, along with teaching about consent, healthy sexual relationships and contraception.
“We might be stupid, and we might be teenagers, but we need to know what healthy sex looks like. We need to know what rape is like. We need to know what consent is. We need to know that there are contraceptive methods so we can have safe sex,” Calderon said.
Classmate Kirra Redden who fought back tears, said students have to know what consent means.
“A hell of a lot of us have been through rape. A hell of a lot of us have been through some kind of bad relationship, and if we don’t have consent they’re just going to walk all over our bodies,” she said. “It’s important for us to have some kind of respect and some kind of safety in our own bodies.”
Elected premier in June, it took mere weeks for Ford to announce he planned to revert the sex-education curriculum to the one put in place in 1998, while consultation with parents in all Ontario ridings takes place.
The move means consent, cyber-bullying, gender identity, sexting and same-sex relationships aren’t allowed to be discussed in high school classrooms.
“We need to teach people that it’s OK to be gay,” an impassioned Redden said, adding Aboriginal culture must also be kept in the classroom.
Calderon said not teaching these issues in school will have a chilling effect.
“People are wondering why suicide rates are so freaking high? It’s because people like Doug Ford are trying to stop us from being here and trying to stop us from being heard. And we need that. We need this conversation,” Calderon added.
About 51 students walked out at Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board’s St. Ignatius High School.
Micaela Morrow led the walk-out and the 17-year-old said it was important to stand up to Ford’s curriculum plan.
“We do not agree with this and we think we should be taught all of these issues because they’re important,” Morrow said.
It’s upsetting, she added.
“We want to be taught properly and we want to be taught about issues that are important because consent matters and so many other things in the curriculum matter. And we do not want to lose that education,” the Grade 12 student said.
“You lose knowledge that kids our age need to learn.”
Similar walk-outs were held on Friday at schools across Ontario.
