THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SEX EDUCATION IN ONTARIO PUBLIC SCHOOLING: A STUDY IN TECHNOCRATIC POLICY-MAKING, 1955–1988

Abstract

This dissertation argues that mid-century liberalism provided the philosophical rational and basis for sex education, and that sex education was cumulatively institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling between 1955 and 1988 as the result of incremental, technocratic policy-making. School-based sex education – an extension of the welfare state – was a technocratic solution to socio-sexual problems such as venereal disease and teenage pregnancy. Sex education was conceptualized as a program of disease prevention and health promotion with the added objective of promoting sexual responsibility amongst students. While school-based sex education was ostensibly a form of sexual regulation, it also conformed to the purpose of liberal education: the development of the critical autonomous capacity of each and every individual student. The sex education that students received, therefore, was a medico-scientific study of sex that stressed prevention and early treatment, but which also emphasized the centrality of individual choice in place of the imperatives of a single standard of behaviour or morality. Sex education policy was shaped by a succession of incremental changes to better remedy both longstanding and emerging socio-sexual problems. When AIDS education was mandated for the 1987–88 school year in response to the AIDS crisis, sex education was further institutionalized. This decision, however, was only reached as a result of the past three decades worth of technocratic policy-making. Social scientific studies had provided evidence, albeit limited, of sex education’s effectiveness in ameliorating socio-sexual problems and reducing government spending. Moreover, empirical evidence indicated that most Ontarians were accepting of sex education – or at worst apathetic about it. While mandating AIDS education was the result of a catalyst, it did not represent a major shift in sex education policy when looked at over the longue durée. AIDS education was largely built upon established policy. By 1988, many aspects of contemporary sex education policy had been established. Ultimately, the ministry’s sex education policy reflected its burgeoning technocratic liberalism amidst an increasingly secular, pluralistic, and sexually permissive society. As a result of incremental, technocratic policy-making between 1955 and 1988, sex education – under conditions of liberal modernity – was institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling.