Key takeaways:
- The region stands by the process and thinks it will likely offer students the best education.
- Many people attended the Alberta legislative grounds Saturday afternoon to oppose the draft kindergarten to Grade 6 curriculum.
Dozens of educators, parents, and kids assembled at the Alberta Legislature Saturday to oppose the execution of the new elementary school curriculum, a portion of which is slated to be taught to students this fall.
“Ditch the Draft Curriculum” rallies took place in Calgary, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and the Vermillion-Lloydminster-Wainwright site. Attendees rallied against the new kindergarten to Class 6 curriculum, which has been under blaze for months.
“Enough is enough. This curriculum is not deserving of our students,” said Carla Peck, a teacher of social studies education at the University of Alberta, who supported arranging the rally at the Legislature.
“The quality is not good enough; it will set Alberta education — and the students who get that education — back 50 years or more.”
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The regional government began reviewing the K-6 curriculum in 2019, then started preparing a new one in the summer of 2020. The drafted curriculum was open to the public to review and deliver feedback till February.
Many have critiqued the process and the curriculum’s content — especially the social studies part, which educators, parents, and Indigenous leaders and elders named racist, Eurocentric, age-inappropriate, and misinformed. The regional government has since rewritten the social studies draft curriculum.
In January, the region formed an advisory group — consisting of 17 bureaucrats, administrators, school trustees, and educators — to figure out how to execute the new curriculum in the fall.
Peck said that the protesters expect their requests to make the Alberta government review move ahead with the process and draw up a different curriculum for students.
Source – cbc.ca
