LET’S EMPLOY THE FACTS IN CURRICULUM DEBATES

Transparency would make for better scrutiny, says Brett Graham Fawcett.

A July 19 David Staples column expressed anxieties present for over a year about the overhaul of the social studies curriculum. His article is a reaction to a prototype of the K-4 social curriculum, and is mainly a catalogue of perceived deficiencies in the curriculum and disapproval of its overall tenor.

Instead of teaching Canadian history, he writes, or speaking of what it means to be “Albertan,” it talks about “First Nations, Métis, Inuit, francophone and diverse groups.” Staples suggests that this curriculum not only talks about the injustices perpetrated on Indigenous people, but “goes far beyond, essentially creating two categories of Albertans: settlers and their victims.”

The government promptly released drafts of the K-4 curricula. It’s clear Staples misread them. For example, he claims that there is “barely a mention of geography” in the curriculum, yet the expression “land and place” occurs nearly 50 times; clearly, students are still going to be taught “geographic thinking,” as the current curriculum calls it.

He similarly claims that history has been practically removed from the program of studies. However, turning to the draft, we find the Grade 4 curriculum still devotes a lot of focus to “stories about Alberta’s past,” albeit with a new emphasis on understanding how those stories are shaped. In other words, Alberta history is a priority for this curriculum; it will just be presented in a way that Staples finds objectionable.

Others find it less objectionable; some would see it as a just act of restitution to devote attention to groups like the French or First Nations, whose stories had previously been explicitly censored by educators (consider the residential schools or the historical opposition to separate schools). Moreover, there is nothing novel about judging a society by how it treats its most marginalized.

Turning to the specific content of the curriculum, there are some major problems with Staples’ analysis. He only had access to the K-4 program of studies, so he does not know whether the aspects missing from this curriculum may show up later. Last year, the government released an overall draft of its K-12 “Scope and Sequence” social curriculum, and some of what Staples laments as absent is slated to show up later in the program.

Much of what he misses in the new curriculum is also absent from the current one. For example, he complains that the values of self-reliance and fortitude are not mentioned. But the current social studies curriculum also does not mention these things in the way Staples seems to be looking for. The curriculum mainly deals with intellectual rather than personal development. The section on “Skills and Processes” students are to learn mentions cognitive habits, like “critical and creative thinking ” or how to “conduct research ethically.” The health curriculum is where skills like “resiliency and self-efficacy” (a neat synonym for “fortitude and self-reliance”) are taught.

Staples is also upset that “free speech” and “competition” are not mentioned, but those terms also appear nowhere in the current K-4 curriculum. At the moment, Charter rights (including freedom of expression) become a focus in Grade 6, and the K-12 draft similarly situates “constitutional rights” in Grade 6. If this is a failure of the new curriculum, it is equally a failure of our current one.

Perhaps Staples thinks our current curriculum is deficient. That would mean he agrees with the NDP that review and revision is necessary, even if he disagrees with the direction they are taking.

And here is where I agree with Staples: this process should be more transparent. Until this draft was released, his column, despite its mistakes, was one of the few things the public had to go on, and a public controversy based on half-glimpsed excerpts can do nothing but strengthen the position of the government’s political opposition.

In the interest of parents, their children’s primary educators, and their own self-interest, the government should open this overhaul to more public scrutiny.

Some would see it as a just act of restitution to devote attention to groups like the French or First Nations.