An Okotoks parent is glad her son is going into Grade 7 next year — that way he avoids the possibility of being part of a pilot for the new K to Grade 6 curriculum draft, announced by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange in late March.
“Thankfully for my son he will be in junior high next year,” said Janet, a teacher who’s real name is withheld.
“If he was going to be experiencing the pilot of this, I would be concerned about the fact it is purely, content memorization driven and he would be missing out on life skills with regards to critical thinking specifically.”
LaGrange said in a press conference on March 29 four key components will guide the curriculum -- literacy, numeracy, citizenship and practical skills.
She stressed the K to Grade 6 curriculum, which is scheduled to start in September 2022, is a work in progress.
“Albertans will have many, many months to have their say as will teachers,” LaGrange said. “Some classrooms will begin piloting the new curriculum this September. We will hear what teachers think while they are actually teaching the new curriculum. As they work through the new curriculum we will also see if there are further adjustments required.”
She said what the government had heard from parents was that the current curriculum “didn’t focus on the essential skills and knowledge that parents required.”
“A concern by parents that there was an over-emphasis on discovery learning, inquiry learning, we heard very loudly, particularly when we were at the doors through election mode that parents really wanted students to learn essential knowledge and skills that would set them up for success,” the minister said.
Finding pilots for the new curriculum may be difficult.
Major school boards including Calgary Board of Education, Edmonton Public Schools and Lethbridge School Division announced last week they would not participate in piloting the new curriculum in the fall. Several other school boards have followed their lead.
Foothills School Division chair Larry Albrecht said in an email the new curriculum will be discussed at its April 14 board meeting.
Scott Morrison, Christ The Redeemer Catholic Schools superintendent, said the division is engaged in curriculum discussions amongst its senior team and site-based administrators this week, and will determine next steps after reflecting on those discussion and attending another Alberta Education information session later this week.
“We’ll comment once we are confident we have a direction that we believe is acceptable to our school board, stakeholders, staff, and administration,” Morrison said.
Janet, who stressed she was speaking as a parent, said there were some positive aspects to the new curriculum, such as financial literacy, but it was at the cost of other skills.
She said some of the curriculum isn’t age appropriate for elementary students.
“For Grade 2 Social Studies the idea of referencing the Silk Road and the context in which students are supposed to understand this and know this in Grade 2 is really difficult,” Janet said.
“There’s a lot of talk of children in Grade 1 understanding timelines, and these are children who have trouble understanding what 40 minutes is and we want them to understand historic timelines?”
She said she feels for teachers who are expected to teach the curriculum in approximately five months as part of the pilot.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association stated preliminary results from an extensive survey on the draft curriculum show that 91 per cent of teachers are unhappy with the draft, including 3 in 4 teachers stating they are “very unhappy,” in an April 8 press relesase.
Janet added she felt the new curriculum has too small of a First Nations-Métis perspective.
“There is a huge American focus,” she said. “As a Canadian, I do find that very upsetting in that we don’t have a strong Canadian focus on all the amazing Albertans who have contributed to Canada.”
Del Litke, a former Foothills School Division superintendent in 2013-14, said he feels there were issues in the process of coming up with the new curriculum.
Litke, who was a consultant for the College of Alberta School Superintendents after leaving Foothills, emphasized he is “a citizen of Saskatchewan so I have no dog in this fight, (but) if my granddaughter was taking this curriculum, I would be disappointed.”
Litke was part of developing the existing Social Studies curriculum while working in Wolf Creek School Division.
“There are always people who are going to have a problem with the curriculum,” Litke said. “What you really need to get right, is you have to get the process right.
“As a rule, if you have a terrible product, you probably have a terrible process. And at first blush, this Social Studies curriculum is not an exception to this rule.”
He called the new curriculum process “a Father’s Knows Best of a narrow ideology, throwing it together behind closed doors – and now they are paying the price.”
He said a curriculum should be connected throughout the education process.
“Not a whole bunch of discreet facts, we will take Chinese history one year, Brazilian history the next year and blah, blah, blah,” Litke said. “It needs to build on itself to be effective.”
