Catholic school division rejects draft curriculum

By Tim Kalinowski on April 16, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com

Joining a growing list of school divisions across the province, Holy Spirit Catholic School Division says it will not pilot the new Alberta K-6 draft curriculum over what it calls the “inadequacies and shortcomings” it sees in the type of learning being offered to students.
“Although there are some good points in the curriculum draft, there are way too many bad points in it,” says Holy Spirit Board of Trustees chair Bob Spitzig. “It doesn’t support quality learning. To roll out K-6, six years, all at one time as subject matters is too much of a burden for our teachers and our staff, and in a pandemic year is just no good.
“It won’t cut it,” he adds. “Our staff does not like it. We have had lots of phone calls, lots of emails from parents who say their children just cannot cope with what’s going on. The age-appropriateness is awful.”
“I think there are some significant lacks and issues with it,” agrees Holy Spirit Superintendent of Schools Ken Sampson, “but I guess I would say the most apparent thing that is quite off is the fact there is so much content that it is developmentally inappropriate for the various levels of the curriculum, and not pedagogically sound. There is a huge emphasis on factual material, recalling information and so forth, but there is a lot of room we need to put in for the higher order thinking skills that are not really noticed in here. The majority of the curriculum seems to focus on those lower level thinking skills such as recall of factual information rather than things like synthesizing and analyzing, and taking information and using it to create new ways of doing things.”
Sampson says there is also a strange “Americanized” focus within the curriculum, particularly for Social Studies, which is out of sync with the Alberta and Canadian experience of history.
“A great deal of this seems to be an Americanized background where the local context of Alberta, and of Canada in particular, has kind of lost the scope,” Sampson confirms. “It seems to be missing so many marks here. So so many. And Social Studies is a big one.”
The emphasis on the rote memorization of random facts is also out of step with the best practices of modern education, says Spitzig.
“We don’t have to have everything by rote,” he says. “These days employers are looking for people who can use technology, and with calculators, with computers, everything is there at a push of a button.”
“We feel this particular curriculum has so many inadequacies and errors in it that it really does not lend itself well for the holistic development of our students going forward,” agrees Sampson.
Sampson states the division is still willing to work with the province to provide substantive feedback, but does not wish to pilot, feeling this lends too much validation to a fundamentally flawed curriculum. He encourages the province to take things back a step and enter into substantial review with teachers and other education partners to address the shortcomings and errors of the curriculum before introducing it into schools.
Spitzig adds it is also important for parents to get involved, and provide feedback on the province’s survey about the draft K-6 curriculum.
“We are hoping the parents come onboard and give their feedback on what they would like to see for their children,” he says. “It is not just up to the school divisions, but it is up to the parents as well to get involved with this one.”
Earlier on Thursday the Alberta Teachers Association also gave scathing criticisms of the new curriculum on behalf of all its teacher members, and called for an independent review of the draft curriculum.
“We support the decision of school boards to not pilot this draft curriculum and, furthermore, we call on all school authorities to refrain from participating in or directing their teachers to participate in the curriculum pilot,” a statement released to the media reads in part.
“Teachers who believe this curriculum is unsound and potentially damaging to student learning have the professional responsibility and moral right to refuse to participate in voluntary piloting. The government and school boards must respect the decision of individual teachers to not participate in piloting.”
To provide feedback on the new curriculum parents and other members of the public are invited to take part in an online survey at http://www.alberta.ca/curriculum.aspx.
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