| Frequently Asked Questions: Revisions to Provincial Health & Physical Education Curriculum (2015) | | | Frequently Asked Questions: Revisions to Provincial Health & Physical Education Curriculum (2015) | <div>As Catholics, we understand that parents and guardians are the primary educators of their children. The parental role in the teaching of family life issues is pivotal and vital. Catholic schools work with parents and parishes to provide students an education that is founded in the Gospel of Jesus, and reflects a Catholic world view. As the province implements a revised provincial health and physical education curriculum, we hope this information will help Catholic families understand how the new curriculum will be adopted in publicly funded Catholic schools.</div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. I’m concerned about the new “sex ed” curriculum that people have been talking about. How will it impact my children in a Catholic school?</strong></div><div>A. The new curriculum is a revision of the current Health & Physical Education Curriculum, last updated in 1998 by the Ontario Government. For more than 30 years, all Ontario Catholic schools have successfully provided a family life curriculum within a Catholic framework, guided by the Catholic Bishops of Ontario through the Fully Alive program. Catholic Family Life Education is closely associated with Religious Education. In Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic schools, it accounts for 20% of the Religious Education program and is usually taught once a week.</div><div>While we have a responsibility to teach the curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education in education policy, we have always done so in a manner that conveys, respects and models Catholic principles to our students. </div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. Can you tell me more about Family Life Education?</strong></div><div>A. In Catholic elementary schools, Family Life Education is presented through the lens of Fully Alive. The program goal is to present a distinctively Catholic view of human life, sexuality, marriage and family. Fully Alive complements the efforts of families and to support what parents are doing at home. The entire program, from Grades 1 through Grade 8, is designed to encourage students to become the people God wants them to be – to be fully alive.</div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. Will the revised curriculum be presented from a Catholic perspective?</strong></div><div>A. Yes. Working with Ministry of Education guidelines, Catholic schools use the Gospel of Jesus and the tradition of the Catholic Church as the starting point in our educational approach to all content. The vast majority of the content required by the revised curriculum is already covered within the Fully Alive program.</div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. Now that the curriculum has been released, what will happen next?</strong></div><div>A. Catholic education professionals will work together to produce resources that support Catholic teachers and ensure the curriculum in our classrooms is consistent with our Catholic teachings and appropriate within the context of a Catholic classroom. The Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) will coordinate this work. ICE has been working on behalf of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario since 1989.</div><div>The Ministry of Education has committed to provide funding to support the development of faith-specific resources and materials that will be appropriate for use in Catholic schools and will support Catholic teachers as they implement the revised curriculum. </div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. What about age-appropriate material?</strong></div><div>A. Although some of the content from the existing curriculum has been reassigned, with the expectation that it be delivered in earlier grades, we are confident the revised curriculum will be delivered within the context of our Family Life program, in a way that is consistent with Church teachings and our faith tradition. </div><div>
<br>
</div><div>
<strong>Q. How can I stay involved regarding the implementation of the curriculum?</strong></div><div>A. We encourage all parents to maintain a healthy dialogue with local teachers and principals as the implementation of the curriculum takes place in September 2015. Information about the existing Family Life Curriculum, Grades 1-8 (2012) can be found at:
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.iceont.ca/">www.iceont.ca</a> (Institute for Catholic Education). If you would like to learn more about the current Fully Alive program, you can download this resource online at:
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.acbo.on.ca/englishweb/fullyalive.htm">www.acbo.on.ca/englishweb/fullyalive.htm</a></div><div>We all care deeply about the education of our students. We pray for parents, the primary educators of their children, weaving the thread of faith through their children’s personal development. Parents are encouraged to speak with their children regularly about their classroom experiences and nurture ongoing dialogue with teachers and school administrators. We entrust our Catholic schools to offer a holistic curriculum that is shaped by a Catholic world view and is faithful to the tradition and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. </div> | faq_health_physical_education | | |
| Statement: Cardinal Thomas Collins on the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum | | | Statement: Cardinal Thomas Collins on the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum | <div>On Monday, February 23, 2015, the Ontario government released its revised Health & Physical Education curriculum. The Ministry of Education has indicated the curriculum will be implemented in schools across the province this September. Below is a statement from Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto and President of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario:</div><div><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px;"><div><em>“As Catholics, we understand that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that especially in the teaching of family life issues, the parental role is vital. </em></div><div><br></div><div><em>For more than 30 years, Ontario's publicly funded Catholic schools have provided a family life curriculum consistent with our faith. The goal is to present a Catholic view of human life, sexuality, marriage and family, complementing the efforts of parents to teach their children at home. </em></div><div><br></div><div><em>While Catholic schools have a responsibility to follow the curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education, they have always sought to do so in a way that conveys, respects and models Catholic Christian principles to our students. They will continue this tradition. </em></div><div><br></div><div><em>A group of Catholic educators will produce resources that support Catholic teachers so that the new curriculum is implemented in a way that is consistent with our Catholic teachings and appropriate within the context of a Catholic classroom."</em></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Since 1989, the Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) has coordinated the implementation of the family life curriculum in publicly funded Catholic schools. ICE will serve as the point of contact for further media inquiries.</div> | statement_health_physical_education | | |
| Statement: Cardinal Thomas Collins on Supreme Court of Canada decision on assisted suicide | | | Statement: Cardinal Thomas Collins on Supreme Court of Canada decision on assisted suicide | <p><em>Cardinal Collins responded to the recent Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide earlier this week. The following statement will be available in parishes this weekend, either as a bulletin insert or at the back of the church.</em></p><p>February 10, 2015</p><p>"For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away." Psalm 31</p><p>In our days, as in the days of the psalmist, so many years ago, people can suffer grievously during their journey through this "valley of tears," and may even be tempted to request assisted suicide. The Supreme Court has now allowed that, and at first glance, it may seem to be the compassionate thing to do.</p><p>There is certainly no need to take extreme measures to extend the length of life. When people are dying, we should surround them with love as they enter into their final experience on this earth, and relieve as best we can any suffering they endure. We need as a society to make effective palliative care more available. But there is a profound difference between compassionately journeying with someone who is dying, or who is suffering when not in danger of death, and killing that person, or helping that person to commit suicide. No one has a right to do that, and it is simply wrong for the state to allow or to encourage that.</p><p>Suicide is already a sadly common tragedy in our society, as persons facing what at the moment they feel to be intolerable suffering of some kind, decide to end their life. We all need to reach out compassionately to anyone contemplating suicide, and to offer whatever help we can to alleviate their pain, be it physical or psychological, so they can appreciate the value of their life, and know they are loved. But for anyone actually to assist them not to escape but to commit suicide is wrong. It is a perversion of the vocation of physicians to have them engaged in helping people to kill themselves. Physicians are called to be servants of healing, not agents of death.</p><p>Assisted suicide is the deceptively attractive face of euthanasia. The most compelling cases grip our attention and sway the debate, and so the Court opens the door to assisted suicide, all the while seeming to do less than it actually has done by surrounding its action with a set of limiting conditions, seeking to guarantee informed consent, as if that were the key issue. But the state is authorizing the killing of an innocent person, whatever controls are in place, and even those limitations can over time be swept away, leading to the more widespread practice of euthanasia. We have only to look at some European countries to see what lies ahead. We Canadians patriotically believe our country is special, but it is not so special as to be immune to the dynamics of increasing access to medical killing, as individualist rationales make persuasive the argument for that in more and more cases.</p><p>The court, recognizing that many physicians, faithful to their healing vocation, will not assist people to kill themselves, makes some very slight room for freedom of conscience. It trusts local Colleges of Physicians and other such groups to deal appropriately with the conscience issue.</p><p>This trust is misplaced. Currently the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is proposing a draft conscience policy which states that physicians who refuse to perform a procedure to which they morally object must arrange that the procedure gets done by someone else. In other words, they are compelled to become accomplices. I urge the College not to go through with this unjust policy, and I urge Ontarians, especially physicians, to speak up against it. First the politicians; now the physicians: the assault on freedom of conscience steadily advances in our country.</p><p>We all are on the way to death and should gain wisdom from contemplating that inescapable fact, so that we use each present moment to prepare for the moment of our death by living well. We should provide all who are suffering with the best medical assistance we can offer, especially in palliative care for those who are coming to the end of life. Most importantly, we should accompany each person with love, especially those without friends or family. But any society that authorizes killing people through assisted suicide and euthanasia has lost its moral compass.</p> | cardinalcollinsonassistedsuicide | | |