Draft curriculum documents ‘misinterpreted’: education minister
EDMONTON Alberta’s education minister defended drafts of a proposed new kindergarten-to- Grade 4 curriculum Wednesday, saying allegations about removing Alberta history from social studies classes are false.
“The suggestion that there’s anything that diminishes the description of Alberta, or the emphasis on Alberta, and the shared history that we have together is a misinterpretation at best,” Education Minister David Eggen said in a Wednesday interview.
References to Indigenous and francophone perspectives sprinkled throughout the draft documents, which the government released to Postmedia Wednesday, are to honour commitments the government has made to Indigenous people, and provide a more complete picture of Canadian history and culture, he said. The increased emphasis on those perspectives won’t be at the expense of others, Eggen said.
“It’s a significant misinterpretation of the new curriculum to suggest that (social justice) is the pivot point that drives this,” he said.
In 2016, Eggen announced the first major overhaul of Alberta’s K-12 curriculum, in which all subjects and grades will be updated in English and French concurrently. More than 400 teachers, academics and others are revising eight subjects in the six-year process, beginning with the early grades.
Postmedia earlier obtained copies of some of the K-4 draft curriculum documents, which had been presented to parents at embargoed consultation sessions across Alberta in May and June.
A Postmedia reporter attended one of the Edmonton consultation sessions in May. The event was off the record, and all documents shared with parents had to be returned to presenters.
Postmedia columnist David Staples has opined that the draft K-4 social studies curriculum neglected to mention Albertans or Canadians and failed to emphasize the importance of history or geography.
In response, United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney repeated on Twitter an earlier promise to put the revamped curriculum “through the shredder.”
In an emailed statement Wednesday, UCP caucus spokeswoman Annie Dormuth said Albertans are concerned with the “great deal of secrecy” in the curriculum writing process. “They are also concerned that the stated goal of the curriculum change is to make students ‘effective agents of change’ — as opposed to things like critical knowledge and teaching the skills for critical thought and decision making,” she wrote.
Eggen rejects claims of secrecy, pointing to public consultations held throughout the process. He is disturbed by Kenney’s curriculum-shredding plans.
“We believe that destroying records of the past, demeaning the heritage that we share, together as a province, that’s one part of his- tory that must never be repeated here or anywhere else,” he said.
The new draft social studies curriculum says Grade 4 students should be able to determine “how the actions of individuals and groups prior to 1905 in what is now Alberta shaped their communities,” and be able to sequence events and developments over time, from first contact with Indigenous people to 1905, when Alberta became a province.
Grade 3 students must be able to interpret maps and other geographical representations with legends and scales, which identify where natural resources are located, the draft said.
Curriculum working groups are now taking feedback gathered from meetings with parents and teachers and updating the K-4 drafts, Eggen said. The ministry plans to post updated drafts online in the fall for public feedback, as well as host public information sessions.
The minister is on schedule to approve the new K-4 curriculum by December 2018. The government does not yet have a timeline for when it will be introduced to classrooms.
It’s a significant misinterpretation of the new curriculum to suggest that (social justice) is the pivot point that drives this.
In the world according to the new social studies curriculum, there is no such thing as Albertans, or even Canadians.
In the many thousands of words of the new curriculum prototype document for K-4 social studies, which spells out in detail how and what things are going to be taught in Alberta schools, there’s not one explicit reference to Albertans or Canadians, let alone any notion that there’s value in teaching Alberta history or Canadian history.
What is the focus? Well, there are six references to “settlers,” along with more than 30 references to First Nations, Métis and Inuit, as well as about a dozen references to francophones.
A typical example is the following directive for kindergarten students to explore and discuss the notion that “stories of First Nations, Métis, Inuit, francophone and diverse groups hold meaning.”
Who are these “diverse groups?” I guess that means the rest of us.
We’re no longer Albertans. We’re Diverse Groupians.
There’s barely a mention of geography in the document and only one reference to any kind of history being taught. That particular reference tells us Grade 4 students are to engage in “analyzing various actions taken to address historical injustices.”
Of course, any reasonable social studies curriculum in Alberta must delve deeply into the often appalling treatment of Indigenous people. Our current curriculum already does that repeatedly. But this new and polarizing curriculum goes far beyond, essentially creating two categories of Albertans: settlers and their victims.
It has one other focus: schooling children in a set of related ethical/political values, such as the need for equity, fairness, giving, sharing, inclusion and diversity. These buzzwords of the social justice movement are mentioned repeatedly.
What about other values being taught? No, not so much. Self-reliance and fortitude aren’t mentioned, let alone the virtues of free speech or healthy competition. Respect and responsibility do get a mention, but almost exclusively in the context of the need for students to support social justice.
This politically charged document wasn’t created in isolation. It is part of the powerful and ascendant social justice movement that has come to dominate universities in Canada and the United States.
The takeover of the educational realm was best described and critiqued by Jonathan Haidt, the prominent New York University social psychology professor and co-founder of the Heterodox Academy, which promotes open inquiry.
Social justice advocates are quite rightly focused on racial and gender equality, Haidt said in a 2016 speech. It’s essential to have their input and advocacy, but not to the extent of them dominating other independent fields, such as education.
For hundreds of years, the search for truth has been the sacred value of education, but that’s now changing, Haidt said. “What is now sacred is victims. Victims become sacred, and sacred means no trade-offs, no criticisms.”
When certain ideas, such as equity and diversity, and certain groups, such as some racial minorities and the LGBTQ community, become sacred, we lose the ability to have intelligent discussions that could lead to insights that will actually address problems, Haidt said.
Flawed, imperfect or wrong-headed ideas go unchallenged, distorting the search for truth at the heart of education. A culture of grievance flourishes. Students become intellectually fragile, demanding safe spaces and shutting down opposing viewpoints.
“What this means is that students hold their beliefs very, very strongly, but they don’t know how to support them,” Haidt said. “You find this when you get into a debate with students about social justice or the concepts, they often cannot explain what they mean because they have not been challenged.”
Of course, not everyone will agree with my interpretation of this document. There will be a more varied and public debate on it and other curriculum documents when Alberta Education publishes them online in the fall.
In the end, we need a curriculum that will help produce citizens with a deep, broad knowledge and understanding of human societies and the physical world, not intolerant zealots weaponized by social justice ideals.