Inverting Curriculum for Inclusion and Reconciliation: Reversing the Poles of the Education Pendulum

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The Pendulum of Educational Reform

Uncharacteristic of this essay’s science-leaning title, I have been a full-time fine arts high school teacher in British Columbia for almost 20 years. Before that I created and ran Victoria Little People’s Theatre that brought the joy of self-expression and learning through drama to preschoolers while trying to land a teaching job in the private school sector after attaining a Bachelor of Education (Secondary Curriculum) degree in 1994 wherein I was subjected to ministry of education curriculum reform through their Year 2000 curriculum document that was based upon recommendations resulting out of the 1987-1988 Royal Sullivan Commission on Education. Ted Aoki curriculum scholar and professor from the University of Alberta had already been advocating for a reform to bring a more student-centred approach to curriculum design, combining statistics with anecdotes from the teaching field to support his contentions. His metaphor describing “curriculum-as-plan” exposed a narrowly held and broadly accepted idea that I was still being taught during undergrad in the 90s.

 For many of us, curriculum, in spite of its inherent indefiniteness, has become definitive, so much so that we speak with ease of the curriculum, the curriculum-as-plan. And when we so speak, we have been drawn into a curricular landscape where in privileged aplomb stands, as a tree does, a single curriculum. In this arboreal landscape, curriculum-related activities such as “instruction,” “teaching,” “pedagogy,” and “implementation” become derivatives in the shadow of the curriculum-as-plan. (Aoki, 1993. p.259)

However, I am getting ahead of myself in explaining my epistemological and pedagogical approach to curriculum and teaching. Before my degree, I had left two years of majoring in Drama and Minoring in Fine Art at Guelph University to audition and then attain a diploma in Theatre-Acting from Ryerson in Toronto. During my classical training I had the opportunity to give Drama teachers in Peterborough school district a workshop on how to engage student learning through imaginative collaborative play. I did this working for the city’s Arbor Theatre for the summer after my first year of Ryerson’s three-year program. I realized then that I wanted to pass the craft on to the next generation, as much of my young adult life had been spent in a teaching role already: as a camp counsellor, a Sunday school teacher, and older brother. I had made the connection unconsciously then of the likes of what Dewey wrote in 1897; that education has a psychological basis rooted in a “knowledge of social conditions.” Honouring the context of the student ensures their investment in the learning on a psychological level. I realized this truth in reflecting on my own schooling where the best memories from elementary school were those that had a teacher behind them who acted on my context and way of thinking to encourage learning. High school memories from the late 70s were made mostly in elective classrooms and extracurricular activities, exaggerating my feelings of futility around the 3-hour provincial exams in every subject, including Drama. Little did I know then how far the pendulum of curriculum would swing the other way some 20 years into my formal teaching career some 36 years later. The question for me remains, “Will the poles of the pendulum reverse and have it swing beyond its measured limit to fully embrace a truly relevant curriculum for students, all societies, and our environment?”

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A Paradigm Shift Requires a Social Revolution

If societal change on a grand scale is any indication of what might affect change in education, then it will take much more than something like a pandemic to force lasting change on the structure and delivery of education. Ironically, Maria Montessori’s hundred-year-old words reflect much of the philosophical underpinnings of today’s curriculum:

Often the education of children consists in pouring into their intelligence the intellectual content of school programmes. And often these programmes have been compiled in the official department of education, and their use is imposed by law upon the teacher and the child. (1918. p. 27)

However, from the unfortunate influence of colonial social economics, it cannot be argued that the act of education, as it exists today, increases one’s chances of material success. Statistics Canada’s Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform followed the average income for 12 years of students who graduated high school and found a very close link between high marks and higher income, especially after the average years for post-secondary were considered. This document was published by British Columbia’s Ministry of Education in July 2020 and has garnered the attention of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. However, the point here is a wariness that this may be a sign that the pendulum has reached its apex and will begin swinging in the other direction toward the more materialistic model, taking its lead from a scientific and statistical methodology. Provincial exams will return under the pressure of a post-secondary system that remains tied in great part to labour and market forces. Education may see again the sentiments of Franklin Bobbitt return to the offices and round tables of curriculum makers. “…the era of contentment with large, undefined purposes is rapidly passing. An age of science is demanding exactness and particularity.” (Bobbitt, 1918.) A few decades later Ralph Tyler, taking a softer approach, regarded the value of subject specialists in forming objectives for curriculum makers, asking them, “What can your subject contribute to the education of young people who are not going to be specialists in your field; what can your subject contribute to the layman, the garden variety of citizen?” (Tyler, 1949.)

Thinking and expressing ideas about curriculum has always been in debate, sometimes heralding education reform. I teach electives as though they are the elemental core subjects. My curriculum pendulum is upside-down to what has existed since the Industrial Revolution. The paradigm shift and revolution in curriculum has been a personal one for me, making learning within the student’s context the only starting place. This is real inclusion and reconciliation, recognizing education partially as a political cog in the wheel of society. This approach allows students and teachers alike to shed the subjectivity and alienation of education in the same way that Henry Giroux describes the intent behind Paulo Freire’s 1978 seminal work, “Pedagogy in Process demonstrates, more than any of his books, that the dynamic of progressive change stems, in part, from working with people rather than on them.” (1979. p. 270.) It is through my expertise and specialization that I am afforded the ability to embed the need for knowing, practicing, respecting the building blocks and details of the craft such as grammar, punctuation, spelling, colour theory, use and care of tools, cultural and interpersonal respect and etiquette, self-discipline and focus, physics, chemistry, etc. while giving students ownership of their learning within the context of their lives, their hopes, and their dreams. In this way, true reconciliation and inclusion is made possible by being a living example for my students, encouraging them to take control of their own learning, affording me the ability to lead from behind, to guide by providing just enough structure for inspiration to take root, and  to allow learning to happen freely and become a more emancipatory experience of personal expression.

References

Aoki, T. T., (1993). Legitimating lived curriculum: Towards a curricular landscape of multiplicity, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 8(3). pp. 255-268.

B.C. Archives (online) – Royal BC Museum, Series GR-1917 – royal commission on education (1987-1988). from https://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/royal-commission-on-education-1987-1988. [Retrieved: July 18, 2020].

B.C. Ministry of Education, Number cruncher report. (taken from learn: the newsletter of BC education), (July 7, 2020.) from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/bulletin/20200709/gpa-and-earnings.pdf [Retrieved: July 18, 2020].

Bobbitt, F. (1918). The Curriculum . Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

Dewey, John (1897). ‘My pedagogic creed’, The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3, pp. 77-80. [Also available in the informal education archives, from https://infed.org/mobi/john-dewey-my-pedagogical-creed/.  [Retrieved: July 18, 2020].

Giroux, H. (1979). Paulo Freire’s Approach to Radical Educational Reform. Curriculum Inquiry, 9(3), 257-272. doi:10.2307/3202124

Montessori, M. (1912). The Montessori method (A. E. George (Trans.). Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. pp. 1-27.

Tyler, Ralph W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. University Chicago Press, Chicago.  pp. 1-7, 16-19, 25-33.