Kenney too focused on business

It's not surprising that Premier Jason Kenney wants to take Alberta children back to the 19th century by making rote learning central to the curriculum. He is a rote thinker, apparently capable of only two ideas — low taxes and incentives for business — which are basically just one idea. He constantly parrots his one idea that everything else is secondary to business, and that more business is the solution to every problem. This blinkered thinking partly explains the current mess our province is in.

With three grandchildren between the ages of four and nine, I am extremely concerned that children between five and nine are now increasingly contracting COVID, due to the government's short-sighted decision to end contact tracing in schools and elsewhere. I am continually amazed at how my grandchildren have rolled with all the shocks and changes of the past year and a half, although who knows what the long-term effects on the mental and physical health of any of us will be.

Children don't need to memorize facts. They need to learn how to access facts in order to acquire knowledge and ideas, so they can become developed human beings and critical thinkers. I suggest that Premier Kenney take a break from politics, go back to school, and finish off that philosophy degree. He could come up with some new and useful ideas relevant to the 21st century.

K.D. Grove, Edmonton