After reading Levin’s article about the development of a curriculum, I have a better understanding for how the curriculum is created which is by a process starting with a policy. A group or a person presents a policy then if the policy is supposed to be implemented into the curriculum, it gets reviewed or created by a team of experts. The team usually consists of teachers, board members, government officials, experts in such subject. The first step is to critique the current curriculum, go over the strengths and weaknesses of the document, then decide what changes need to be made or what improvements could be made. This is usually a very long process which can last up to years so if school divisions are underfunded or provinces do not give extra funding for curriculum revisions then it will simply not get done and the content can become very dated. A new perspective that this article provided for me was the experts who are creating the curriculum themselves, experts have extensive knowledge in one subject are so they will be biased for what people and students should know about their background expertise. The problem also with this is that they have plenty of knowledge about their own subject but maybe not about children learning, the school system, or the depth that children can understand a concept. One of the biggest issues when creating a curriculum is not taking the public opinion into consideration, many adults who have graduated from school realize there are important things they wish they could have learned in school. For example, taxes, in school I learned many things that I felt like I would never make use of again but I never learned some essential skills in life such as how to do my taxes. After reading this article I was concerned with the lack of involvement from the students and their parents, this curriculum is shaping the students and if there is no consideration of the students and their parents then they do not get to shape their own children into who they want to be.
The Treaty Education curriculum is a small document that is implanted into education but they do not have subjects, it is learning about the spirits of all such as mother earth, the animals and learning about the treaties, and peace with all things. Comparing the Saskatchewan curriculum and the Treaty Education curriculum there are very few things to be taught because it is a way of learning and nor a check list of objectives to be taught. The one thing that surprised me the most was when this document was published, it was in 2007. This is surprisingly late to be entering our education system, we have known for many years that all people are equal but we refuse to acknowledge their ways of learning. The Ukraine curriculum was created in and used in 2003 in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which is four years before the Treaty Education curriculum. To me this shows that we value other white European cultures more than the Indigenous people who were here long before any of our ancestors.
