I'm reminded of the Vancouver Sun columns of Les Bewley, (a BC Judge) during the 1980s. Aside from his most memorable quip that, "humanities faculties should be replaced with library cards", he wrote a series on comparing one room schools of the 1920s with the level of basic knowledge taught then and now. He concluded that the one room schools that graduated grade ten students were given, based on exam material, the equivalent of first year undergraduate levels at today's universities. I don't imagine things have gotten any better after the ensuing 40 years. Given the institutional capture of today, vouchers and deregulation look like a good means of offering choice and escape for many.
The current factory model of public education is, at its core, about 200 years old. The model was designed believing that "one size fits all" so standardizing curriculum and assessment was the 'heart' of curriculum policy and content. And standardization is the most efficient way to monitor the system - the factory.
Second, the model was created not for the betterment of the learners but for the growth of the economy. This is trickier to manage and measure. Each new iteration of curriculum policy and content talks about giving children the skills they need to thrive in the future (this always annoys me, what about thriving today??). The 'new' documents either infer or outright state that the health of the country's economy depends on this. 10 year olds don't care about the economy...
In my opinion, the problem lies in beliefs about how people learn. Changing the focus of policy, the selection and organization of content and assessment to reflect how the brain learns would be a massive undertaking, requiring universities teacher training faculty, neuroscientists, cognitive neuroscientists... to come to the curriculum table. It would require what I call "a Phoenix moment". Until this happens, the tsunami of education reforms will remain an exercise in just tinkering around the edges and our children and grandchildren remain subjected to boredom, weird ideologies etc. Teachers will remain frustrated and will keep closing their classroom doors.
100% Susan. I’m a (recently retired) pediatric nurse who spent most of my career teaching kids and families some very complex concepts and technologies. We studied « ways of learning » among other things, and you can’t imagine how incredibly helpful it was assessing my approach to say, a rough single dad compared to an educated couple. Loved my job, and did many, many school visits. Good teachers were golden.
"Curricular police" are a threat to teacher autonomy and teacher autonomy is sacred in the eyes of teachers and they are backed 200% by their unions. Autonomy is necessary, each class of learners is different and the challenges teacher face is not for the faint of heart. Finding resources, support for the challenges is not a surprise; curriculum policy tends to be a 'one size fits all' document. The myth of addressing diversity is infuriating when the curriculum is about standardized outcomes and assessments. The research coming out of neuroscience about how our brains learn has some common elements about how we learn regardless of physical, emotional, social, and intellectual differences that populate every classroom. In my opinion (I am a retired teacher), this research needs to be the 'heart beat' of curriculum policy.
You're right. And I didn't emphasize this enough in the article. I was a high school teacher myself for 20 years, so I'm aware of the genuine conflicts here.
Professional and experienced teachers will naturally prefer having the space to customize their classroom environments to serve their individual students. And Provincial one-size-fits-all curricula designed by inexperienced bureaucrats in Queens Park aren't likely to be very good. All that is true.
But once you create a factory-scale public education industry, then I can see no practical alternative to some amount of top-down oversight. Otherwise our kids (and grandkids) will be the victims of weird ideologues and lazy download-and-print-curriculum-files teachers.
A good teacher is worth his/her weight in gold, all the way up through university. So many accomplished people have thanked a teacher who inspired them in the past. In my humble opinion being a good teacher is very particular, and disinterested people who take the job as an easy way to buy a fridge and stove aren’t worthy.
Sadly those good teachers are rare. In my experience with both my daughters having gone JK -12 in the Ottawa Catholic Board, it's about 20%. 60% are phoning it in, just clocking pensionable hours. They're not changing kids' lives but they're not dangerous. The remaining 20% are a full on shitshow and in the private sector would be completely unemployable.
I'm reminded of the Vancouver Sun columns of Les Bewley, (a BC Judge) during the 1980s. Aside from his most memorable quip that, "humanities faculties should be replaced with library cards", he wrote a series on comparing one room schools of the 1920s with the level of basic knowledge taught then and now. He concluded that the one room schools that graduated grade ten students were given, based on exam material, the equivalent of first year undergraduate levels at today's universities. I don't imagine things have gotten any better after the ensuing 40 years. Given the institutional capture of today, vouchers and deregulation look like a good means of offering choice and escape for many.
Wow, with those numbers I’m rather gobsmacked there are no ‘Curricular Police, Secondary’ on the sunshine list as well.
The current factory model of public education is, at its core, about 200 years old. The model was designed believing that "one size fits all" so standardizing curriculum and assessment was the 'heart' of curriculum policy and content. And standardization is the most efficient way to monitor the system - the factory.
Second, the model was created not for the betterment of the learners but for the growth of the economy. This is trickier to manage and measure. Each new iteration of curriculum policy and content talks about giving children the skills they need to thrive in the future (this always annoys me, what about thriving today??). The 'new' documents either infer or outright state that the health of the country's economy depends on this. 10 year olds don't care about the economy...
In my opinion, the problem lies in beliefs about how people learn. Changing the focus of policy, the selection and organization of content and assessment to reflect how the brain learns would be a massive undertaking, requiring universities teacher training faculty, neuroscientists, cognitive neuroscientists... to come to the curriculum table. It would require what I call "a Phoenix moment". Until this happens, the tsunami of education reforms will remain an exercise in just tinkering around the edges and our children and grandchildren remain subjected to boredom, weird ideologies etc. Teachers will remain frustrated and will keep closing their classroom doors.
100% Susan. I’m a (recently retired) pediatric nurse who spent most of my career teaching kids and families some very complex concepts and technologies. We studied « ways of learning » among other things, and you can’t imagine how incredibly helpful it was assessing my approach to say, a rough single dad compared to an educated couple. Loved my job, and did many, many school visits. Good teachers were golden.
"Curricular police" are a threat to teacher autonomy and teacher autonomy is sacred in the eyes of teachers and they are backed 200% by their unions. Autonomy is necessary, each class of learners is different and the challenges teacher face is not for the faint of heart. Finding resources, support for the challenges is not a surprise; curriculum policy tends to be a 'one size fits all' document. The myth of addressing diversity is infuriating when the curriculum is about standardized outcomes and assessments. The research coming out of neuroscience about how our brains learn has some common elements about how we learn regardless of physical, emotional, social, and intellectual differences that populate every classroom. In my opinion (I am a retired teacher), this research needs to be the 'heart beat' of curriculum policy.
You're right. And I didn't emphasize this enough in the article. I was a high school teacher myself for 20 years, so I'm aware of the genuine conflicts here.
Professional and experienced teachers will naturally prefer having the space to customize their classroom environments to serve their individual students. And Provincial one-size-fits-all curricula designed by inexperienced bureaucrats in Queens Park aren't likely to be very good. All that is true.
But once you create a factory-scale public education industry, then I can see no practical alternative to some amount of top-down oversight. Otherwise our kids (and grandkids) will be the victims of weird ideologues and lazy download-and-print-curriculum-files teachers.
A good teacher is worth his/her weight in gold, all the way up through university. So many accomplished people have thanked a teacher who inspired them in the past. In my humble opinion being a good teacher is very particular, and disinterested people who take the job as an easy way to buy a fridge and stove aren’t worthy.
Sadly those good teachers are rare. In my experience with both my daughters having gone JK -12 in the Ottawa Catholic Board, it's about 20%. 60% are phoning it in, just clocking pensionable hours. They're not changing kids' lives but they're not dangerous. The remaining 20% are a full on shitshow and in the private sector would be completely unemployable.