Children are at stake in the battle over Alberta’s new K-6 education curriculum
By Letter to the Editor on April 17, 2021.
You may have noticed the ongoing fight between Alberta’s Conservative government and the education establishment – the teachers’ union and university faculties of education – over the government’s new humanities curriculum. And you may have noticed that the “expert” commentary in the mainstream media is uniformly damning the Conservatives: “They want to set back our educational system forty years,” and “undo the progress of the past three generations.”
It’s clearly a fight between two opposed philosophies of education – but don’t let your eyes glaze over: your kids are at stake.
The traditional or natural philosophy of education believes the purpose of schools is to help kids mature into responsible adult citizens. Kids must be equipped to join the political, cultural and economic world into which they are born, the real world. It’s only partly “traditional,” drawing on our roots, but it also has to adapt to the changing needs of society. You know: reality. The key term here is “core knowledge.”
In the Seventies, however, university faculties of education became dominated by devotees of Marxist Paulo Freire and Post-modern Michel Foucault. Their progressive education believes the purpose of schools is to liberate kids from the Oppressive Past. Creative children need only “imagine” their futures, and the past only obstructs their “self-expression.” Yes, kids need some skills, but when it comes to our shared history and culture, they only need to learn that it was evil, is evil. The key term is “liberation.”
Ever wonder why city councils now face demands that they tear down John A. MacDonald statues? Ever wonder where “woke rage” and “cancel culture” come from? Thank the education elite. The academic fad became a path to Power, indoctrinating the teachers who indoctrinate your kids. I saw it all happen at the University of Alberta. By 1980, education theory was “all Foucault, all the time” and still is. By 1990, a friend lecturing in Ed Psych said she’d lose her job, if she challenged the liberationists. Google-search Foucault. Not progressive science. Sixties ideology.
By the 2000s, liberation was in the classroom, with the social studies texts Globalism, Nationalism and Ideology. Some of my kids have taken the course, and they grieve that easily 80 per cent of their classmates end up socialists, dissing their own capitalist parents. My own kids know that socialist regimes from East Germany and Russia to China and North Korea have killed over 100 million of their own helpless citizens in liberating them. But none of their classmates have been taught real history. And the classroom culture is so dogmatic, my kids were allowed little self-expression.
The government may lose this fight. Ambitious academics and public administrators are oblivious to the fact that they can break the country that feeds them, killing the goose as did poor, once-wealthy Venezuela. The Conservatives were elected by 55 percent of Albertans, partly on the promise of reforming education, but “expert” educators take every opportunity to make them look bad. We ordinary citizens assume that public servants obey the elected government, their legal bosses, and some do. But in general, they are the “experts,” working in the bureaucracy, rising in the bureaucracy, and “expert” primarily in stonewalling and embarrassing the government.
Ironically, Alberta’s educational bureaucracy is busily defending the Sixties, just as France, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Singapore are all abandoning progressive education and returning to cultural core knowledge curricula. This is all documented – with facts and figures – in Seymour Hirsch’s, How to Educate a Citizen (2020). It’s a quick read or four-hour audiobook, and it might encourage you to defend your kids. John Lennon’s Imagine is a beautiful song, but it’s really lousy public education policy.
Joseph K. Woodard, PdD, has been an academic, journalist (Calgary Herald) and federal tribunal judge; living in Calgary, he now teaches Great Books online at Angelicum Academy’s (www.angelicum.net).
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The author said, “The classroom culture is so dogmatic, my kids were allowed little self-expression“.
As depressing as that statement is, it’s absolutely true. More importantly, it’s a testament to the danger of ideology. Ideology is basically self righteousness that promotes divisiveness. Ideology is the lowest form of human thought. Despite ideology being the lowest form of human thought, it is the basis of our political and educational system.
It doesn’t matter if it’s political ideology (NDP, CON, LIB), Religious ideology, or Social ideology. All ideology is narrow minded thought that not only stifles the highest form of thought (objectivity), but it also stifles the human “soul” (self expression).
In specific regard to educational curriculums:
All current flavors of curriculums should be placed where they truly belong: in the garbage pile along with tests and test scores. Kids should only be taught basic life skills that includes thinking skills (objectivity and logic). All other time, kids should be allowed to pursue the knowledge and skills that their particular heart desires.
To summarize, the education system should not be teaching kids what to think, but how to think. It’s high time we abolished ideology, useless facts, and useless skills from the education system. That insanity should be replaced with basic life skills, self learning, rationality, logic, and objectivity.
NOTE:
The detrimental effects on our kids due to our backwards educational system is profound and can’t be understated. I’m talking up to and including low self esteem, depression, female promiscuity, drug / alcohol addiction, and even suicide. I might elaborate on that in a following post.
The new curriculum that the UCP wasn’t needed. The previous conservative party started revamping the K-6 curriculum over 10 years ago with the participation of educators and experts, the NDP added a few things ( lbgtq) but mostly kept it the same. It was getting ready to be implemented when the UCP came into power. They trashed it all and decided to make it in their own image. The hubris that this government has to design a new curriculum in a couple years that took other administrations a decade to design is outrageous. Then they act surprised when educators, school boards and parents are upset.
BS parents are upset. This parent will be upset if the damn NDP Unions stop my kids from using this curriculum.
haha! another tool of the machine that thinks unions are bad. btw – do you know unions came about long before the ndp, during each of lib and con govts? you know why unions came about? i guess it was not taught to you in our woeful ed system. but maybe history is stupid to you? for a modern day, real life take, look at the working conditions of those employed by multinationals where no unions exist…a real time window into our past.
hard to know where to start here – agreed, ed system is woeful. however, it would matter little if we followed “France, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Singapore who are all abandoning progressive education and returning to cultural core knowledge curricula.” abandoning progressive…kinda like cons abandoning progressive lol. and who wants progressive? that is getting too far ahead of the past, right? the great, good old past…wars as usual, fewer social programs the further back we go, including no old age pension, no public health, no public schooling, racism good, gays are criminals, using alcohol and other drugs is criminal…stupid progressive stuff would rectify those gross and inhumane assaults on freedom lol
there is just so much else wrong with the arguments in this letter – and all the more scary given the credentials posted like medals by the writer.
“The traditional or natural philosophy of education believes the purpose of schools is to help kids mature into responsible adult citizens.” this may well be the philosophy, but it is not entirely the reality, unless retention and regurgitation of various tidbits of rote information is all it takes to prep people for life. missing in education: how things we use in every day life work, and how they can be fixed – trades related and just plain, useful common knowledge and tactile skills development. such approaches would also vary up a day, making it more interesting. more attention needs to be given to creativity, artistically (dance, drama, writing, art, music). problem solving should be prioritised, from social issues to machines to trades related/handy household projects.
lifeskills development in education are presently woeful: teaching how to fall into line does not cut it; we need to develop reason, fairness and good intention. we need to teach empathy, cooking/nutrition, how to care for pets (you know, so there is less casting them away to the streets because one got tired of the long term commitment, and, to hopefully eliminate or greatly reduce the incidence of sadistic acts).
we would be well served by skills workshops around interactions with others, particularly around rights and limits and sharing; how to budget; how to file tax returns; how to conserve and be responsible; how greed affects others…limitless, really, but makes for an interesting day and for more functional and resilient and caring people.
the biggest issue with education today is that it remains much like it was a 100 years ago, 200 years ago…it is elitist, and too much about formal book laden information. it is about math to the extent of math that almost nobody uses once we get much past grade 8. it is about information and theory and “facts”. classical/formal/book related learning is necessary, but to an extent, and moreover, for those that have an interest; for others, their interests and skills are with doing, fixing, making…and, it is easy to teach problem solving through these endeavours. people with tactile skills need to be as valued as the memory machine, and, they in fact comprise the majority of people; only about 20% actually go on to complete a university degree. yet schools are set up as mini universities, just like a 100 years ago.
can we learn problem solving, thinking outside the box, creativity and so forth working with our hands and bodies along with our brains? could youth thrive knowing their proclivity for real life skills was as valued as the bookie with a great ability to memorise? would more youth be happy to attend school, feel that school was meaningful, and feel that they were meaningful and had a future to look forward to? it is not happening nearly enough now, and it was not happening before the “evil foucalt” was even born.
i know the letter supports the ucp curriculum, but mostly, it supports the good old days…which never were; they were just days when authority was king, and white people of european descent were the privileged subjects. here we have a product of those times: phd, judge, academic, journalist…and yet, poor reasoning litters the letter.
the writer has expressed a poor understanding of what is socialism, among other things. “My own kids know that socialist regimes from East Germany and Russia to China and North Korea have killed over 100 million of their own helpless citizens in liberating them.” is the writer for real? those systems were/are not socialist – not even nearly. politically they are totalitarian autocracies/dictatorships; economically they are plutocracies – the massive brunt of the wealth is owned by a relative and powerful few.
while we are not yet, officially, an autocracy or totalitarian state here, we are rather like a plutocracy. however, relative to the rogue states noted, our middle class is larger, and our poor less poor. however, truer examples of socialist states can be found in norway, iceland, finland etc. purer examples of socialist societies can be found in history in a plethora of the many indigenous societies the world over. please come to know this: true socialist societies do not have much of a gap between economic top and bottom. they shun the likes of greed – seeing it as sickness and antisocial – and promote service to others. with each serving others, each also gets served. a win win.
russia, unlike the soviet union, does not consider itself a socialist state, although the ussr was not one, either. moreover, calling the likes of china and north korea socialist is not only incorrect, doing so is an outcome of a key part of our educational and social conditioning geared to defile socialism. this leaves us to instead embrace capitalism and all of its inefficiencies, injustices, its unsustainable madness, and the infantile values its places on greed and self service. it further deludes us into believing that capitalism is the sole way to freedom. is the writer even aware that socialism is only an economic construct, and democracy is a political one? thus, it is entirely possible, and desirable, to have a social democracy.
it would help the writer to also understand people are not tearing down statues and committing cancel culture etc because of their education in schools lol. people are mighty pissed off, mind you, and they have every right to be pissed off.
these approaches, and others, are not always the wisest – agreed. but then again, capitalist wars are not ever the wisest – right? and let us not overlook the irony of sending the poorest to the fronts – to defend the wealth of those that tend to always be buffered from the slaughtering.
and when there is not a world war happening that the uber capitalist has not engineered, there are numerous and never ending sundry political interferences that result in the deaths of many innocents…just to get a puppet regime in place so a land can be “legally” plundered for its wealth. moreover, there are the sundry wars that go on all the time, also thanks to the wealthiest capitalists. war is money – the military industrial complex rakes in oodles of cash for the world’s plutocracy (defence budgets, which conveniently redirect public money to private hands are just a piece of the profound sums of money these scum glean from fomenting war). another way crony capitalists in our plutocracy pick our pockets via our govts is through public debt. they own a lot of it, and it is a type of bread and butter welfare for them. this not only enriches the few, it further impoverishes the masses, as they pay a never ending compounded interest on never ending debt. gone is wealth into the hands of robber barons that could pay for the things that improve quality of life for all.
yeah, the education system needs an overhaul. but what it does not need is a return to the good old days that never were.
The curriculum is excellent, and as I have 3 children that will be impacted, perhaps it is time the damn Unions backed off, and let parents have a say. “Woke” ideology is the destruction of our society, and this letter is really accurate as to what is happening.
the association of teachers are the ones that work with the kids, and they have a far better grasp than the ivory tower hosers. in fact, the present curriculum sucks, too. time for real and meaningful change – a system that not only teaches real life skills and skills for life, but one that equally teaches to and respects tactile skill sets as well as academic skill sets.