Education crusader makes spurious arguments

Re: “B.C.’s new curriculum needs to be fixed,” letter, Oct. 31. I am a bit fed up with the amount of ink that the Times Colonist gives to the “back to the basics” education crusader who wrote this letter. The letter-writer continually raises straw men and makes spurious arguments in an attempt to deceive a reader’s better judgment.

For example, her latest letter suggests that B.C.’s high private-school enrolment is based on parent frustration with B.C.’s “expensive” new curriculum, and implies that introducing calculators in kindergarten will lead to a generation of math illiterates.

There is no mention of the previous provincial government’s war against public education, and the cutbacks and funding formulas it introduced to spur private education at the expense of the public system. There is no acknowledgment that digital technology is a fact of everyday life for today’s kindergartners, and is probably something we should consider when designing curriculum.

The world is changing, and education must do its best to move forward, because yesterday’s realities are not tomorrow’s. One can always argue against policy, but the writer’s fact-bending rants suggest that she has little interest in engaging with the complex realities that our public system must face in delivering future-appropriate learning outcomes.

Although her opinions invite regular rebuttal, it does not follow that the Times

Colonist need publish all of her hooey.