It’s silly season at Queen’s Park.  No, the budget isn’t going to be tabled for a few more weeks.  It’s silly because of all the chatter over the sex-ed curriculum, which was only made sillier by people who used dinosaur era logic (and yes, I used the prehistoric animal on purpose) to oppose it.

Not long ago, on this blog, I called for the Ontario PCs to change the nature of the conversation we are having with Ontarians.  A change from the type of party that has a habit of reducing complex problems to simple slogans. A change that would show the party to be more intelligent and have their messages understood by a more educated population (a public, I might add, that will only increasingly become more educated) that is ready to listen to a more sophisticated response to today’s pressing issues.  And, most importantly, we need to tap into the feelings of people about those pressing issues.  Failure on all fronts this week.

How does the response from some Tories on sex ed reflect on what most people are feeling about kids these days? It doesn’t.  It doesn’t speak to the fact that kids in grade 5 or 6 can figure out how to film, edit, and post videos online.  It doesn’t speak to the fact we are becoming less acquainted with who are children are seeing or talking with.  It doesn’t speak to the confusion our kids are facing when they are not only engaging in sexual activity at a younger age, but they don’t have the maturity to understand the possible consequences of the decisions they are making.  In addition, kids have access to all sorts of information, good and bad, the moment they have a smart phone or tablet and they are keeping their conversations far away from parents.  This is precisely the moment that parents are losing track of what their kids are doing.  Most parents, I suspect, would be shocked to learn about what their kids are doing and at what age.  Many kids will be exposed to sexual things before they learn about it in their health class.

But instead, we say something along the lines of ending “Kathleen Wynne’s sex ed agenda.”  Nothing is right about that slogan.  It’s intended to appeal to people’s ugly raw emotions rather than their inner sensibilities, and it’s just a terrible way to do politics.  It’s terrible politics because the views of people who have concerns become easily dismissed as irrational.  The protesting parents of the sex ed reform have never been further from actually undoing the curriculum than they are today.

I think it’s even worse than that though.  The long term repercussions for the PCs are going to be significant.  It has taken us a long time to build trust among the voting public for the Ontario PCs to talk about education in a positive way.  That trust has been shattered.  Nobody wants to trust a group of people to reform an education system that is in need of reform when they think the party is out of touch with reality.  The problem with not having a party brand is that others will brand it instead.  The PC brand turned into creationist homophobes this week, and it isn’t pretty (it’s also not true).

The sad thing is that there are legions of parents out there who need a party to speak to them on education, and these parents are counting on the PCs to be that party.  We keep letting them down.  These parents are concerned about things like protecting extracurricular activities, supervision on the school yard, and better parent-teacher communication, in addition to what and how kids are learning in the classroom.  Parents are also concerned about the fact that any time a change is made in education, the government consults with their partners, and they almost never include parents among their partners (except they did talk to parents with this curriculum update, albeit a select few).  Sex ed reform could have been “an” example, perhaps, that could have been used among a whole bunch of better ones, but it should never have been “the” example as we’ve seen this week.  Once you open the Pandora’s box, it’s hard to contain how people feel and what they will say.  That’s why Tim Hudak didn’t want us talking about sex ed after 2011.  He preferred talking about points where we could build consensus.  Go nuts on extracurricular activities and math curriculum reform, he allowed, because it spoke to a path where we could build credibility on education.  When education came up on the leaders debate during the 2014 Election, the PCs never had a stronger position than their calls for math curriculum reform.

Parents (and teachers) are concerned about cramming too many things into a school year, and one might well wonder how this 200+ page document will find its way into the school day.  One might well wonder what might not be taught in order for the sex ed curriculum to be taught given the limits of the instructional day in our schools and such.  We have a unique environment in Ontario where we add curriculum but reduce instructional time.  Start explaining this to people!  There is a way to talk about these issues without getting into a debate about the appropriate time, if ever, to talk about sex in schools.

It’s very frustrating to watch it all unfold.