The Curriculum Policy and the Politics of What Should Be Learned in Schools article really challenged my idea of curriculum that I “learned” from when I was in school. I was under the impression that curriculum was made by the government and I honestly didn’t think that they took other opinions into account when developing curriculum. When Levin said, “The role of politics in policy is troubling and misunderstood by many educators” (8) I feel like that is true about some of the teachers I had growing up. All my teachers sort of talked about curriculum in a negative way, complaining about how much needed to get done in the year or about what topics were required to be taught. That is what gave me the impression that the government had total control over curriculum. However, as Levin said, “Although every government comes to office with a set of policy ideals or commitments, the reality is that much of what governments attend to is not of their own design or preference” (10). In fact, this reading really showed how complicated it is to make curriculum because you have to find a middle ground for so many varying perspectives. There are so many different groups involved including: school councils, post-secondary institutions, teachers, principals, and business groups. I understand why business groups got involved, because they a could have students working for them one day, but I also don’t really see the need for their involvement? Especially when they have just as many or more seats than groups like teachers do (according to the example we saw in class). However I am surprised at the lack of voice students have in curriculum policy. The only real student involvement seems to be the “use of student outcome data to guide education policy” (19). However, if you talk to first and second year university students I am sure you would hear a lot of “I wish I learned that in high school” or “how come we didn’t learn this in school.” It would be interesting to see how voices like that could affect curriculum development.

I liked the The Saskatchewan Way: Professional-Led Curriculum Development article because it was focused specifically on Saskatchewan which is where I have done all my schooling so far and it is also where I plan on teaching once I get my degree. This article talks about the changes that curriculum has gone through in Saskatchewan. The thing that surprised me the most was the claim that “Saskatchewan was an early leader in this approach [collaborative approach to curriculum development] … it carried through to it’s most recent major global curriculum and educational reform” (6). The only reason this shocks me is because of the time these advancements were happening. For example, “The core curriculum review was carried out through the Core Curriculum Policy Advisory Committee, which was established in 1985” (7) which “provided a rationale for educational change in the province, based on sound coordinated principles” (7). However, you know what Saskatchewan still had running during these times? Residential schools. It just shocks me that our province could have been an “early leader” when we were the province that had the last residential school to close.