What we learned at #JustTheFacts Ontario’s Sex Ed Curriculum

For our first Just the Facts panel, we partnered with the Royal Canadian Institute for Science (RCIScience) to host an expert panel on the topic of Ontario’s Sex Ed curriculum at Hart House on Saturday 8th December 2018.

This event was open to both the UofT community and the general public to provide the available evidence on the differences between the two Ontario Sex Ed curriculum before the provincial government’s public consultation for feedback closed (Dec 15th).

Moderated by CityNews reporter Maleeha Sheikh, our panel included:

• Dr. Sarah Flicker (York University)
• Dr. Lauren Bialystok (University of Toronto)
• Dr. David J. Brennan (University of Toronto)

A video of the panel discussion can be found here.

The event began with short presentations from each panellist, where speakers provided context to the Sex Ed curriculum. Dr. Bialystok focused on the changes between the two curricula. Dr. Flicker provided a historical background to the curricula, specifically focusing on what prompted the 2015 curriculum to be introduced and the main changes between the old and new curricula. Lastly, Dr. Brennan spoke about the effects of not having a (thorough) Sex Ed Curriculum in place.

Following the short presentations, Maleeha Sheikh led a moderated discussion, asking questions such as: what exactly were the changes between the two curricula? What are important concepts or terms to keep in mind?

Event attendees were encouraged to submit questions via notecards to the panel. The last 30 minutes were dedicated to answering submitted questions.

With more questions than time available, not all audience-submitted queries were answered during the event. Fortunately, our three panelists remained behind for over half an hour to answer remaining questions from attendees. In addition, our panelists wrote responses to remaining audience-submitted questions, which can be found online (see here).

TSPN would like to give a big thank you to our panelists for sharing their expertise with the University of Toronto community and the general public. We would also like to thank our incredible partner, RCIScience, and our event sponsor, the U of T Student Initiative Fund, for helping make this event a reality.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who attended and participated in this event. We hope that you learned about the differences between the old and new Ontario Sex Ed curriculum, as well as the research and science supporting the curriculum.

— The TSPN Team

The Toronto Science Policy Network (TSPN) aims to provide a platform for students (graduate and undergraduate), as well as post-doctoral researchers, to learn more about and engage in science policy. Sign up for our mailing list to stay in the loop about TSPN’s upcoming events. Read about our previous events on our Medium page here.