The Distinction between Morals and Ethics: Discourses of Sex that Reciprocate with Students’ Learning Needs within the Toronto District School Board and other Secular School Boards of Ontario

• Main Author: Matrim, Jair
• Other Authors: Boler, Megan
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: sex; education; philosophy; ethics; schools; Toronto; curriculum; morals; Ontario; Deleuze; 0998
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/33663

By analyzing surveys, census data, policies and curriculum, it is demonstrated that the Toronto District School Board’s policies for equitable, anti-heterosexist, and anti-homophobic curriculum become stymied by how students and sex are routinely treated as subjects of moral control in curriculum. According to Gilles Deleuze's (1988) interpretation of Baruch Spinoza's (1632-1677) philosophical works, the distinction between morals and ethics is also the difference between slavery and freedom. Together with theoretical perspectives of sex and sexuality from Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin, the distinction between morals and ethics works to specify how particular discourses of sex can work to enslave or to empower students. Comprehension and circulation of the distinction between morals and ethics is proposed to increase the potential for curriculum to reciprocate with students’ individual learning needs, support the free and autonomous organization of desire, and promote the possibility of a democratic, inclusive, pluralistic, and secular society.