Dear Editor,
Re: “Curriculum as good as its funding,” News, Oct. 14.
As a secondary and post-secondary curriculum developer, I learned first hand how different philosophies of education can affect the formulation and adoption of educational goals, instructional strategies, and the writing of course curriculums.
There are too many variables at play in relation to how and why governments choose one or another educational formula to list here, but suffice to say that no matter what goals and agendas are chosen, there will always be controversy and debate over their effectiveness and long-term viability.
Given current questions and concerns about the “new” K-9 curriculum, I feel it necessary to point out the following:
a) What the B.C. government is proposing does not represent a “new” type of learning and anyone who took the time to research the history of education and educational philosophies would learn that these principles have been expounded by various educators over many generations throughout the last century;
b) Curriculums are not, and should never be, fixed entities — they should be flexible enough in their design to allow for variables, such as differences in personal teaching styles, economic determinants, quality of teacher training, and shifting social values;
c) You can engineer the most carefully considered and well built airplane in the world, but if your pilots are not fully trained, the plane will never get off the ground.
After 25 years of involvement in curriculum design and implementation I know, for example, that it is very easy to make the promotion of critical thinking skills a primary curriculum goal but extremely difficult to find teachers who have had the kind of exposure to critical thinking theory and methods in their own training that would allow them to be as effective as they should be teaching the same to their own students.
The debate over changes in curriculum is only as effective and useful as the level of its comprehensiveness and the depth of the informed knowledge that should guide it.
Ray Arnold
Richmond
