The raging Ontario controversy over Sex Education has, once again, raised the whole issue of what constitutes meaningful parent engagement. Vocal supporters of the 2015 Ontario Health Education Curriculum maintain that the public consultation process was extensive, broadly representative, and ticked off the boxes in terms of recognized “stakeholder groups.” Following the traditional, well-practiced model, a “group consensus” was forged and, in that respect, it might be considered exemplary.
On a critical matter like sexual health affecting family life, it may simply not be good enough. Far too many Ontario parents were marginalized and it’s hard to find evidence of anyone embracing what Dr. Debbie Pushor has termed a “family-centric school” philosophy or “meaningful parent engagement.” Instead of defending the results of the consultation, it may be time to look at how the next round can be conducted to answer those deficiencies.
The 2015 Ontario sex education curriculum changes may well have been timely, professionally-validated, and reasonably neutral in terms of language. That’s not really what’s in question — it is the process and the means used to forge that document touching on issues central to healthy adolescent development and family life. Given the nature of the curriculum, it would seem to be a situation tailor-made for “family-centric” consultation.
Critics of the 2015 sex education curriculum continue to maintain that the public consultation was structured to marginalize the vast majority of parents as well as certain parent advocacy groups, rural and small town communities, and urban immigrant families. Four thousand parents were consulted, but the vast majority were parents serving in official capacities on local school councils. Indeed, the consultations were, for the most part, conducted on school grounds. Public input was weighed, but it came mostly from “friendlies” vetted by principals who served on their school councils.
The Ontario health education model of consultation appears to violate the criteria set out by Dr, Peshor in her proposed “family-centric school” framework demonstrating “meaningful parent engagement.” Her recent keynote address to the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (June 2018), part of a three-day, “Walk Along with Parents” forum, drives that point home. In it, she called upon educators to rethink their conventional approach and to embrace a “gentle revolution” better attuned to responding to the needs and aspirations of parents and communities.
“We need that voice at the table, and it’s important to understand that expertise is a critical piece. We need to do a better job of talking with parents rather than for them or at them. That’s what I’m hoping we can achieve,” Pushor said in an interview prior to her keynote, which elicited a standing ovation.
As a mother of three sons, as well as a teacher and principal in Pre-K – 12 education, Pushor sees the school-parent relationship through both lenses. Since embarking on her PhD. in Education, it has been the focus of much of her research.
Walking into her son’s school on his first day had a profound effect upon her, even though she was herself an experienced teacher and principal. It struck immediately “how schools were not necessarily inviting places for parents” and sent powerful signals that they “did not encourage their participation.” She describes this as the “colonialism” of schools in their dealings with parents.
Her key message: “We need to move from school centric to family centric. Teachers need to remember it is not your classroom; it is a public building. Most parents place their trust in the teacher and they aren’t looking to push the boundaries that exist, but we need to make some fundamental changes and unpack the story. Teachers claim the space at school and then we tell families how it is going to work.”
“By having authentic family involvement,” Pushor told the Saskatchewan teachers,”we can have the best of both worlds. As teachers, we don’t have to give one up to get the other.”
Most provincial education authorities, school districts and schools fall far short of genuine parent engagement. “We just keep doing the same thing and we don’t see that as problematic, but our world has changed and in education we’re not changing at the same pace,” she said in calling for that “gentle revolution.”
Two important building blocks, as Pushor sees it, involve doing a better job of preparing teachers at education faculties and then later incorporating home visits into a teachers’ regular routine. “This comes right back to what we do in this building [Saskatchewan College of Education]. We are sending teachers out there without the required background in terms of this type of engagement.” Then she added: “I’m a big proponent of home visits because too often in the current model, we–teachers and family members–sit around and are scared of each other. We need to build trust, and we need to do this in a different, more meaningful way.”
What Pushor has done to demystify engaging regular parents, Hong Kong born Calgary professors Shibao and Yan Guo are doing for Asian, Middle Eastern, and East Indian parents sidelined in most education consultations. Respecting parent knowledge, seeking to understand differing religious values, and respecting stricter codes of morality would go a long way to engaging the Thorncliffe Park schools scattered throughout contemporary urban Canada.
High sounding speeches are commonplace in education, but Peshor’s vision now comes with plenty of evidence-based research conducted over the past decade. It’s all neatly summarized in her splendid article in the Winter 2017 issue of Education Canada. Instead of managing parent consultation, she proposes the kind of engagement that breaks down barriers, particularly in marginalized communities: “When schools and school bodies work in culturally responsive ways, parents do not have to have the words of the school or of unfamiliar governance structures to participate. They are able to join the circle, to speak from their own knowing, to share their own wisdom and insights, and to positively influence outcomes for their children and their families.”
Do conventional education public consultations measure up as legitimate parent community engagement exercises? With the prevailing model of working with recognized interest groups and selected parents ever bring us closer to “family-centric schools”? Does the much celebrated 2014-15 Ontario consultation on sex education bear close scrutiny? What lessons can be learned about getting it right, the next time?
Educhatter 
The commentary raises some good questions. In the “Sex Ed” parent engagement process, should“one size fit all” be the objective,? Or should there be an 80/20 rule allowing for 80 percent Ontario required curriculum and 20 percent community overlay to account for local/religious/cultural considerations? Your thoughts on community customization? (Or some other balance)
Parent choice for schools is a sensible solution which has far been overlooked.
Sensible, but only when active and informed educators are open to listening. State-imposed universal curriculum rarely works and schools find ways to customize the curriculum. Policy-makers tend to deny that this happens. Requiring compliance in core matters and providing local options is not only feasible, but preferable when the diversity of family values is weighed in the balance.
Here’s an update on Sex Education and resistance to the proposed Doug Ford government’s plan — by Ontario School Boards: So far, 11 out of 31 Public Boards are in dissent and none of the 29 Catholic Boards. Time for a little digging.
I should start by saying I teach at, and my children attend independent schools. I do home visits, have regular parent education nights where we discuss the year’s curriculum on a deeper level than my handing them a syllabus, and I spend a great deal of time on communication with parents, my end of year reports look at the whole child, and I actively engage parents in volunteering at the level their family circumstances allow. I put extra effort in with families where English is a second language as well as with separated/divorced parents. Part of what gives me time and energy to do that is that while I have an internationally recognized curriculum scope and sequence to follow I decide how to meet those objectives in my classroom, and my professional development time is spent where I want to be focussing my attention based on self study and working with peer mentors. We do no standardized testing, and I am not learning a new math curriculum overhaul every 5 years as political winds change. If I had those external pressures as a teacher it would distance me from my families, and pull me in two directions meeting the state and meeting families without a lot of room for my input as the teacher in the classroom. I’m not in Ontario but have read the sex ed curriculum and there is nothing wrong with it- parents would not be upset if at each grade level on a parent night the teacher went through not the text on a ministry document – but what this is actually like, alive in the classroom, alongside some active listening to parents about what their real fears are.
As in the sex ed thread
– democracy is messy
– more legitimate voices mean it is even messier
– more need for evidence- based logic
We should remember that science consists of a bunch of rules that keep us from lying to each other.
And we also need to remember
– beliefs can trump facts
– emotions can trump reason
– teaching is NOT telling
– learning is NOT listening
Meaningful Choices For Parents And Students – Part I
Parent engagement in education is a long-standing piece of unfinished business! A professor described 150 years of the education system always overwhelming the parent voice. And his observations only go up to year 2000. The intervening 18 years are more of the same.
Professor Cutler’s book — Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education — has Amazon.com describing the book with this brainteaser: “Who holds ultimate authority for the education of America’s children—teachers or parents?”
The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights says: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” But “the system” claims they have a “social license” to impose what they see fit, at the same time as paying lip service to “consultation”.
Have you ever experienced “ parent consultation”? It is various forms of the Delphi technique refined to achieve what the system finds most convenient. Surprisingly, then, a consensus always appears! This is what happened in Ontario with the 2015 sex ed curriculum, as Paul describes. Most of the consultation was in highly structured settings and with insiders, “friendlies”, as Paul dubs it.
But, why are we constantly assuming the centrality of state schools? The assumption by those related to this post — Paul, Pushor, the principal from Thorncliffe, etc. — all see it as “given” that some state jurisdiction would co-ordinate common procedures and compliance. They do not talk as if there is a multiplicity of ways in which education can be achieved.
Meaningful Choices For Parents And Students – Part II
If we’re really concerned about schools that parents want and support then the obvious answer would be education choices, in a wide array of shapes and arrangements. If students gaining the best and most appropriate education is important, then again, obviously, parents and students must have choices — not a one-size-fits all model!
After a decade of dismal results in education reform in the USA a number of experts are again supporting parents voting with their feet. Many groups see that parental choice through charters has considerably increased their children’s life chances. Michael Petrilli) says: “ . . . the best strategy might be to allow their families to vote with their feet and move to high quality schools of choice.” (https://jaypgreene.com/2018/07/23/education-reform-2003-to-2017-modest-success-epic-failure-so-whats-next/#comments). Matthew Ladner, in discussing the prospect of continuing decline and reduced spending, sees families deciding “ to fend for themselves. Call them home-schools, home-school co-ops or micro-schools . . . “(https://jaypgreene.com/2018/07/23/education-reform-2003-to-2017-modest-success-epic-failure-so-whats-next/#comments). In the UK Professor Flew wrote the book, “Power to the Parents: Reversing Educational Decline” in 1987, advocating a wide array of alternatives.
To me, the most significant statement in this post by Paul is that there is a “’colonialism’ of schools in their dealing with parents.” This fits with my observations over a half-century of parent involvement. As well as the state-as-educator assumption using the instruments of colonialism to retain their compliant subjects, there is the additional nervousness about authoritarianism evident in education systems and discussions. John Holt actually mentioned his dread of creeping “fascism”. In my view democracy, freedom and good education of the young do strongly depend on meaningful choices for parents.
The use of the term “colonial” for some of the behaviors being imposed on families by the schools is not new. In any invading takeover there is the expectation that the governed (or to put it more bluntly, “conquered”) people are to adopt new cultural norms in obedience. What is new is that the term is being applied to schools as takeover agents, not the invading armies of old going into new land territories.
Here is an example of the Pope in Italy — two years ago — protesting the gender ideology programs being enacted in some Italian schools.
“The Pope said that children today ‘are beginning to hear strange ideas, a sort of ideological colonization that poisons the soul and the family: we must act against this . . . This ideological colonization, he said, does great harm and can even destroy a society, a country or a family.’”
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/06/17/italian-families-protest-forced-cross-dressing-of-schoolchildren/
[In my earlier comment I provided a wrong link to the comment by Petrilli. It should be: https://medium.com/@thegadfly_69057/where-education-reform-goes-from-here-69234ea1776 ]