ECS 203 Blog Post #3
In this week’s readings, we examined how the curriculum is developed and implemented in many different school systems. Levin provides many knowledgeable and insightful perspectives on how the curriculum continues to change based on who is in power (government) at the time. Each person has their own perspective and belief on how the curriculum should look and what is most essential to teach. Levin explains this feeling as “an important element of the politics around education is that everyone has gone to school, so just about everyone has a feeling of being knowledgeable and a personal response to educational issues. The same would not be true of health care or environmental policy or energy policy. People’s own school experience, whether primarily positive or negative, deeply affects their views about education policy.” (Levin, Pg.15)This reading opened my eyes to the fact that everyone has an opinion on what should be taught to students in the curriculum; we have these opinions because (almost) all of us have personal school experiences. Another point raised in this article is that the government has a large part of what is taught in the curriculum and when we need to teach it. The government sets the tone in our education system, but so do the voters. A quote to better understand this states “whether controversial or not, education policy decisions, because they involve questions of public choice and concern, are essentially political in nature” (Levin, Pg.9).When the government makes unpopular decisions amongst the voting population, they risk being thrown out of their position; keeping the public satisfied means considering their opinions. Levin provides us with the truth about the curriculum and pedagogical decisions; as a future educator, it scares me that what is being placed in the curriculum comes from people who have no real educational insight aside from their own lived experiences in the education system. To sum up my learnings from Levins article, I will leave you with one final quote “Although the curriculum is a fundamental part of the framework of schooling, curriculum deci sions and choices are shaped in large measure by other considerations— ideology, personal values, issues in the public domain, and inter ests. Curriculum decisions are often part of a much larger public debate that often extends beyond education to larger questions of public goods.” (Levin, Pg.22) This article should be a must-read for those revising our curriculum; we must understand that the curriculum is shaped by much more than what we feel is vital for students to learn; the curriculum is also largely politically based.
Levin’s article informs us that the curriculum is vastly based on politics and stems from what the government (and citizens) believes should be essential and of value to teach. With this newfound knowledge, we look at the treaty education curriculum with a fresh perspective. The government (and external sources) make the curricula; that being said, it is a safe assumption that few (or no) indigenous people were involved in deciding what should be taught or added to these necessary teachings. In turn, the government implementing these teachings into the curriculum could be an example of outside pressure being put on the government to make these essential changes. The government’s relationship with indigenous people is working towards mending, but we still have a long way to go; advocating for change to be made is our job as educators, but so is acknowledging that the curriculum is very political and policy based.
Work Cited
Connelly, F. Michael, et al. The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction, SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uregina.ca/lib/uregina/detail.action?docID=996458.
Treaty Education: Outcomes and Indicators
https://learn-ca-central-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com/
One thought on “ECS 203 Blog Post #3”
Hi Alea,
We both had similar takeaways to this week’s readings of how Levin’s article exposes how the implementation of the curricula is based around the government’s choices and what they deem to be a “major issue”. I like how you noted the immense power balance this imposes and how the people of the government are the ones in power with these curricula choices. I also liked how you expressed how the people of government have their own opinions on education because they too have had experience in the education system but this is concerning because their opinions may be not based around what is needed to be changed currently because they are no longer currently affected by it. I agree with you that these people of power who have educational insight making decisions for education is unsettling and I also learnt that there is very little public discussion when they make these decisions which supports that. I also want to note to you that I learnt that these implementations are often made quickly with little information. I didn’t think of how the Treaty education implementation was likely to not include perspectives of what Indigenous people wanted in the curriculum and that very much supports how the development of school curricula continues to be political in nature and based around who is in power. However I do think the implementation of Treaty Education is a great first step to creating a change and shows how these figures of power may be starting to understand the drastic impact Indigenous people have on our society and are acknowledging this is a major issue that needs to be addressed in the school curricula.
Thanks for sharing!