A mock up of the lawn sign calling for the draft curriculum be thrown away (Photo courtesy of Dustin Archibald)

By Liam Verster

Albertans Reject Curriculum Draft

Grande Prairie man involved with grassroots organization calls for a new curriculum

Apr 6, 2021 | 1:47 PM

A father, business owner, and author from Grande Prairie has joined the grassroots organization Albertans Reject Curriculum Draft (ARCD) to call for the draft K-6 curriculum to be thrown out, and a new one developed with direct help from education experts.

Dustin Archibald, the lead Graphic Designer for ARCD’s promotional material, says the new draft curriculum is age-inappropriate and exclusionary.

“For example Grade 2 students learn about Ghengis Khan; ancient Greece; the Black Death and comparing it to COVID. There’s no mention of LGBTQ2S, and it makes a passing reference to Indigenous perspectives,” says Archibald.

Archibald points to plagiarized passages that come from Wikipedia and the state of Virginia’s Common Core program, saying this curriculum does not look like something any expert in childhood education would approve.

He goes on to say the curriculum is filled with incorrect facts, terms, and teaching theories. One of the issues related to teaching theories he points out is the reliance on rote learning, which is a memorization technique based on repetition, which Archibald says does little to teach students about critical analysis or critical thinking.

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“The government has decided that the best way for children to learn is to have this large corpus of knowledge, and then maybe draw from that later on in their education. But education experts disagree with this. It’s been widely panned as being not the way that you need to teach children. There are many experts who look at this curriculum and say ‘This is not going to work, this is going to leave children way behind in comparison to the rest of the world.'”

This concern of the education system falling behind has Archibald worried it will set the next generation back decades in terms of their ability to think critically and be able to advance in a new changing world where it will be important to be able to learn and adapt to changes.

Archibald also says the curriculum, which can be viewed here, appears to be very Eurocentric and filled with a lot of ideology.

“The Alberta Government, when they were elected, said they were going to bring in a curriculum that is free of ideology. However, when we go through it, it’s obvious that is not true.”

He points to the fact that Grade 3 students are being taught about balancing provincial budgets, and while financial literacy is important, Archibald says it would be better to teach young students about budgeting their own money rather than whether a province should go into debt.

Though he says there are a lot of flaws in the curriculum, Archibald does note that the English and Language Arts sections show some promise, and they appear to be have been more vetted than the rest of the curriculum.

The previous curriculum, which Archibald notes did need some upgrades, was developed over the course of six years and was more even-keeled than the current draft as it included input from both the NDP and the previous PC government.

“It was actually a non-partisan curriculum. They consulted a lot of people, they consulted teachers, and their recommendations were really heard and taken into account.”

He adds this draft curriculum was rushed out in just one year and only involved speaking with 100 teachers during the consultation process.

A survey is open on the Alberta Government’s website to collect public feedback on the draft curriculum, but Archibald says more needs to be done to have people voice their concerns than just fill out the form.

“We would like people to email their MLA; the Premier; the Education Minister; the Opposition Education Critic; school board trustees and tell them the Alberta Government needs to scrap this draft and implement a real curriculum that’s been vetted by true experts in education.”

He adds the ARCD is not advocating people do any sort of protest during the COVID-19 pandemic but does encourage people to write messages with sidewalk chalk on the road or sidewalk outside MLA offices to draw further attention to the matter.

A petition to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta has also been launched on the group’s Facebook page.

The curriculum draft can be run on a trial basis, meaning school divisions can choose to opt-in if they wish to teach this curriculum in the 2021-22 school year, and then it will come into effect province-wide in 2022-23. While those school boards that choose not to run the trial are not able to provide any formal feedback to the government, Archibald says the message will be very clear if few or no schools actually run it, and encourages people write their school boards and ask them not to implement the curriculum.

The Albertans Reject Curriculum Draft organization was started on Facebook following the release of the draft curriculum. Over the course of just about a week, the group has grown to have over 32,000 members. The ARCD has since launched a website, where it is providing people with yard signs, designed by Archibald, calling for the curriculum to be thrown out. The group hopes this movement will have a similar result to the Defend Alberta’s Parks yard sign campaign that was organized in 2020.

Everything GP has reached out to the Ministry of Education, but the government has not responded to a request for comment.