British Columbia’s Education Ministry wants to reform the school curriculum. The problem with our existing one, supposedly, is that it places too much weight on factual content. This, the ministry says, “is exactly the opposite of what modern education should strive to do.”
Instead, our children should be taught “concepts” and “learning processes.” Factual knowledge, it seems, is so 19th century.
I’m not making this up. You can read it for yourself on the ministry’s website, though be warned — this stuff is not for the faint of heart.
Here are some other innovations the ministry has in mind:
• The volume and prescriptiveness of the curriculum will be reduced.
• Teachers will be given expanded latitude in what and how they teach.
• Children will receive more exposure to “big ideas.”
In one respect, none of this is surprising. Most of the people who advised on these reforms were teachers. Of course they’d like more “latitude”; who wouldn’t?
But what gave rise to this critique in the first place? Many parents would be surprised to hear their kids are overly burdened with fact-based knowledge.
The concern appears to be this: Modern technology is expanding at an exponential rate. No body of facts, however well constructed, can keep up with the pace of change.
Instead, what our schools must teach is critical thinking. Armed with this skill, our kids can tackle whatever comes at them.
It’s a seductive idea. Indeed, it’s a wonderful idea, if you believe our schools can pull it off. I don’t.
To hear the ministry talk, critical thinking is just another skill to be acquired, like playing the piano or learning chess.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The ability to think critically comes only after you learn a body of facts. And a rather large body at that.
It’s not a skill, separate and apart from factual knowledge. It’s a mindset you grow into, as your knowledge of the world expands.
Don’t believe me? Think critically about the following proposition: Vaccines are linked to the rising incidence of autism. Or this one: Organic foods are healthier.
These are both false statements, although significant numbers of people believe them. Critical thinking doesn’t reveal the truth. Familiarity with medical science does.
It’s quite true that our world grows ever more complex. That’s one reason so much ignorance abounds. It’s difficult to keep up.
But by demoting factual knowledge, while encouraging kids to “think” for themselves, the ministry is only making things worse. You don’t end up with critical thinkers. You end up with self-assured illiterates.
What’s the definition of “prejudice”? Judging something before you know the facts. Isn’t that what the ministry is about?
Then again, what are these “big ideas” that our schools are going to teach? Down that road, and not very far down it, lies someone’s ideology.
It’s difficult to twist the propositions of basic math and grammar. Big ideas offer more scope.
Indeed, they offer unlimited scope, when let loose on kids who have been starved of disciplinary knowledge.
Is the theory of evolution generally correct? Yes, but you could lead 12th-graders to reject Charles Darwin if they didn’t know biology.
Who started the Second World War? It takes a grasp of history to answer that question.
The ministry, I would argue, has it backwards. The role of education, more than ever, is to teach our children facts. Half-baked opinions, rash judgments, false assertions are all around them on the Internet.
What they desperately need is a source of authoritative information they can trust. Only our school system has the resources, and the necessary scholarship, to be that source.
Teach our kids a love of knowledge, and critical thinking will emerge on its own.
