Tall Poppies Need Clipping
Alberta’s education system has been envied by the rest of Canada. But, now, a levelling-down is happening
Just a quick check into the 56-page document — Inspiring Education — provides telltale evidence that Alberta is just following an international contrived change to harmonize state education systems with global agendas.
These are just a few of the words you will find that align with others in the field — transformation (9X), competencies (21X), deep (5X), shift (15X), global (15X). These concepts appear in our BC Ed plan, Common Core initiative in the US and 21st Century Learning projects in the UK, NZ and Australia. The “shift” of course relates to the swing away from content, knowledge and skills to soft competencies as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking — moving from the measurable to checklist observations.
The noteworthy thing about Australia is that the education transformation became an important issue in campaigning preceding the recent federal election Sept 2013 — with a Coalition government winning over the long-term Labour government. At the moment there are two Australian Reviews taking place — one into the Curriculum and one into Teacher Training.