Of 81 international jurisdictions participating in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Ontario ranked second overall in reading internationally and nationally. (British Columbia also achieved significantly higher average reading scores than other G7 member countries )
Ontario’s results in science were among the top 10 internationally and second in Canada, while Ontario’s math results were also within the top 15 internationally and second nationally.
According to the Fraser Institute’s Derek J. Allison, “Quebec’s math performance is not only the best in Canada, it’s among the very best in the world. So too with Alberta in science, and Alberta and Ontario in reading.”
But Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce thinks Ontario’s teaching of reading needs smartening up.
Lecce is extending his government’s “back to basics” curriculum push into kindergarten.
Interestingly, Lecce has no background as an educator. He has a Bachelor of Arts in political science and immediately after graduation worked in then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s office, eventually serving as director of media relations.
Lecce owns a public relations consultancy firm called Northern Narrative, based in the Greater Toronto area. According to Northern Narrative’s LinkedIn page, the company is “staffed by public affairs specialists who made differences on Parliament Hill and Queen’s Park.”
I might be going out on a limb here, but it is probably safe to presume that the “back to the basics” push coming out of Lecce’s office has more to do with Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario politics than progress in public education.
According to a report by Alison Jones of the Canadian Press, Lecce says the back-to-basics push at the kindergarten level “will ensure students have strong reading, writing and math skills when they enter Grade 1.”
“New learning expectations such as a focus on understanding sound-letter relationships, building phonics knowledge and using specific vocabulary words will be implemented,” he said at a news conference.
According to the CP report, Lecce says the changes are in response to recommendations from the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read report, which looked at how to address systemic issues that affect learning to read.
Interestingly though, the Right to Read report says nothing about “back to the basics” or “building phonics knowledge.”
What is does say is that “literacy goes beyond the ability to read and write proficiently. It includes the ability to access, take in, analyze and communicate information in a variety of formats, and interact with different forms of communication and technologies.”
That sounds a little more like going forward to the expectations of the 21st century rather than back to the practices of times long gone.
The Doug Ford government has also rolled out proposed revisions to the elementary grades language curriculum that will be in place for September 2025.
The revisions include, for the first time in at least a generation, compulsory instruction in cursive writing. (Side note — cursive writing was not acceptable at Sydney University when I submitted my 1968 master’s thesis — it had to be typed.)
Reaction to all this has been split, according to a report by Katherine DeClerq of CTV News. “It’s exciting,” Todd Cunningham, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto.
On the other hand, Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education, a non-profit that provides research, resources and connections for people involved with public education, points out that while curriculums have to evolve, she is concerned about “going back to anything.”
“It’s 2024. The world is changing fast,” Kidder is quoted as saying in the DeClerq report. “Ontario has a world-renowned kindergarten program, and what we have to be careful of is, if you start adding things, adding mandatory expectations to anything, something has to be taken away.”
The current curriculum, Kidder argues, is focused on foundational life skills that prepare kids to learn, problem-solve, collaborate and communicate.
“It’s important that we don’t leave any of those skills out,” she said.
Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, told CTV News Toronto that “neither she nor her members were informed of the curriculum changes before the announcement had been made,” adding that she doesn’t understand the push for the curriculum to go “back to basics.”
“We’re talking about kindergarten. It couldn’t be any more basic than that,” she said.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
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