Offer the basics, not platitudes
Re: “Curriculum must keep pace with changing world,” Brad Vonkeman, Letters, March 14 This article is rife with the usual platitudes: “We’re glad you’re interested and involved,” “We know what we’re doing,” so please leave us alone,” and “Albertans recognize …” that things need to change as the world changes, except that very few “Albertans” seem to have been consulted — only 1,250 out of four million.
Yes, things have changed. Yes, there’s more to learn. But whatever else the curriculum teaches, it must cover the basics — reading, writing and arithmetic — simply because without those, our students are going to be limited in their future choices or fail completely.
Despite the assertions made in the article, many parents feel that their concerns are not listened to, and that they are fobbed off with those same platitudes — as evidenced by the number of petitions and protests being reported.
We need to remember that those who are telling us today that they know best are the same ones in the late 1990s and early 2000s who:
Brought us Brain Gym, which advocated that you didn’t need to learn anything, just massage the correct part of your body and it would “come to you.”
Changed the math curriculum at such short notice that teachers were only a couple of pages ahead of the students, often couldn’t explain the concepts and left parents scrambling — and paying for tutors.
And more recently allowed the introduction of the “no-zero” policy in any schools where the principal chose to do so.
The results of this “enlightened” system have been young adults who often can’t make change from $20 without the use of a calculator or cash register, who think “meridian” is a grassy strip between opposing lanes of a highway and whose “whole word recognition” concept has left them with a severely limited reading ability and vocabulary because they had to guess at a word, it didn’t make sense and they stopped trying.
Kids won’t pick up those skills as they go along because spelling, reading and times tables are better handled at younger ages. Who, at 12 or older, will admit they can’t do those things?
Lastly, why would industries who might not even exist 15 or 20 years from now be involved in deciding how our children are taught today?
David Chawner, Onoway