The Politics Behind Curricula & The Saskatchewan Way

It has always been a very controversial topic of deciding what is in a curriculum and what should be taught. From personal experiences, I have seen both students and teachers scrutinize the curriculum, however, both in different ways. Many teachers find it extremely difficult to meet all the outcomes the curriculum calls for – there are only so many days and hours in the year to cover everything. Not only limited time, but also having to account for the unpredictable that occurs can throw off initial plans and schedules. On the other hand, we tend to find students complaining about the content they are learning. A common phrase we hear in the classroom, especially in some maths or science students say “why do we have to do this? When are we ever going to use this in the real world?”

The “Curriculum Policy And The Politics of What Should Be Learned In Schools,” article points out that there are deeper problems within the curriculum relating to the process of how it’s made, rather than what we tend to see everyone complain about. Mainly, we see how the curriculum is created based on “ideology, personal values, issues in the public domain, and interests.” When this happens often the students and teachers best interest is looked past and forgotten which makes the process not practical and creates problems within the classroom. The article suggested ways of resolving some of these solutions by creating a board of a variety of non-experts such as students, parents, and teachers. By doing so they have many different points of views to help determine which ways would work best in the interest of the students and teachers. They attempted this unique variety of a combination for a group to debate about calculus in the Ontario curriculum. They noted that by having this diverse group it takes away those previous politically driven issues and gives different perspectives that are normally not considered. It also becomes more of an understanding process since the teachers and students know first hand of how the curriculum plays out within a school setting as it affects them, rather than these experts who create the curriculum in the first place yet don’t see it actually ends up working. 

We see through “The Saskatchewan Way: Professionally Led Curriculum Development,” article how complicated the curriculum is. That is why it is such an important process in creating a curriculum because even though it is complicated, it is extremely important for the education of the students to be successful. 

“The Saskatchewan Way” of the curriculum process has been seen to be more successful than many other places methods that dealt primarily with other considerations rather than the students and teachers interests. The Saskatchewan Education procedure mainly focused on principles all of which benefits the students. They use methods involving a variety of different parties to get many different perspectives. The diverse group including, teachers, students, parents, people of the community, and other education partners. This allows for a variety of scrutiny so many people’s concerns and voices are being heard rather than no input from others within the curriculum. The Saskatchewan Way thrives for corporative, principle based, and respectable goals and outcomes within this curriculum that is always open for change which we have seen to be effective. 

This method that the Saskatchewan teachers use is similar to the method that was used in the case of the Ontario calculus debate – which they found to be successful. This goes to prove how moving forward this can be an ideal method of decisions to be able to get the variety of perspectives and knowledge from everyone how it affects in different ways.