I had to laugh at the comments in the SQE post dated 2012. Not much has change after I read the Star article and comments. This comment said it best - “Hmm. Most people accept sex education in schools(except for the whacky fringe). What happened during McGinty’s term was that he tried to introduce a new sex education curriculum (pushed by Katherine Wynne as it happens) that crossed a line for many parents - they felt there was basically too much information a little too soon. Should your child really be learning about the trials and tribulations of anal intercourse at the age of 11? That kind of thing. One of our friends - not religious in the least, nor particularly political, but possessed of a 7 year old daughter, actually called the premier (mr family man) a paedophile. Educators should consult not just with each other, but with the parents of the children they teach to reach an agreement on the appropriate level of information.”

I too stopped reading the current Ontario health and physical education curriculum. I stopped reading as soon as I reach the part where the sermons and lectures are given to parents on their lack of knowledge and deficits in physical and health activities. If only the K to 12 did consult with parents, they soon get an earful of the skills and knowledge parents do possess that would put the edubabble of ‘movement competence’ back in its proper perspective.

So, I decided to look up the term movement competence, because I had some strange thoughts that K to 12 crowd thought parents were incompetent creatures. I had no idea, movement competency has its own field under the category of competency management. http://www.academia.edu/283868/Talents_and_Competency_Management_Strategy_for_Public_Sector_Performance

So now we see the roots of the term originally came from the global intellects, and specifically the government bureaucrats. What does it look like on a national level?  A 2014 paper - A K-12 Federal
Policy Framework for Competency Education:
Building Capacity for Systems Change”
http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/CompetencyWorks_A_K-12_Federal_Policy_Framework_for_Competency_Education_February_2014.pdf

At the local level, as I discovered the term movement competency can also be called ‘physical literacy’. A Canadian paper - 2009 Position Paper
Physical Literacy for Educators
http://www.phecanada.ca/sites/default/files/pl_position_paper.pdf

Here is a gem for edubabble quotes - ” In other words, physically literate youngsters “should be creative, imaginative, and clear in expressive movement, competent and efficient in utilitarian movement and inventive, versatile, and skillful in objective movement” (Morrison as cited in Wall & Murray, 1994, p. 5).”

That said I am still scratching my head since the K to 12 have little in physical education, since most of those activities have been cut in today’s schools. No recess twice a day, and a shorter lunch period that is highly regulated as not to bother the unionized teachers who apparently only work during instruction time, does not lead to improving outcomes in the physical health of children. Nor trying to make room to talk about sexual topics when the vast majority of the parents have expressed that it crosses the line for various reasons.

However, the K to 12 is not listening to the pubic and instead they mocked the public for being heathens, and produced more edubabble.  The curriculum PEF document does indeed mentioned sex eighty times. The first encounter, the ‘movement competency’ term is connected with sexual activities. On page 9, “They can apply the understanding of movement that they acquire in health and
physical education to other physical activities that they participate in at school, at home,
and in the community, and they can apply their learning about healthy living to make
healthier food choices, help with meal preparation, and make decisions about substance
use, sexual health, and injury prevention.”  From there it devolves into a mishmash of edubabble…I highly doubt the students have their listening ears.

I thought the birds and the bees was labeled ‘The Talk’ with parents when children entered puberty. Of course I would rather have the public health nurse or the parents give it to single gender classrooms as we used to do in Malton. The sessions with the nurse were the highlight of the girls’ year. The nurse got rave reviews and our girls learned a lot.