ECS 203 Blog Post #5

• According to the Levin article, how are school curricula developed and implemented? What new information/perspectives does this reading provide about the development and implementation of the school curriculum? Is there anything that surprises you or maybe concerns you?
• After reading pages 1-4 of the Treaty Education document, what connections can you make between the article and the implementation of Treaty Education in Saskatchewan? What tensions might you imagine were part of the development of the Treaty Education curriculum?

After reading the Levin article, I was quite shocked by how big of a role the government has in developing and implementing the curricula. The idea of so much politics going into the developmental process of the curriculum was shocking, but I also learned from the article that the government also has to keep in mind the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the voters (mainly to assure their political party stays in office). Personally, my perspective changed after reading this article. If I’m going, to be honest, I’ve voted every year for the same political party, but never thought about my education while doing it. I feel that now after reading this Levine article, I will start to think more about who I vote for because now I know how much influence the government has on the curricula. Within the article it says, “It is also important to remember that voters are not necessarily very interested in every public issue; and even if voters are interested, they may not be knowledgeable.” (Levin, 2007, p. 10) Which I think really resembles my situation, I’ve always been interested in the voting process, but have never really been educated for example like what I said above about not realizing how much influence the government has on developing and implementing the curriculum. I think one thing that concerns me, is that nowadays young adults like me are not educated enough on voting and its processing so we either tend to vote at random or not at all. This could potentially harm students and their education because the wrong party could be voted in and education could change dramatically. It’s all what if’s, but it was an initial concern after reading this article.

I’ve always thought learning about treaties is important, and personally growing up I didn’t learn much about treaties until university started. I feel there may have been some argument within the development of the Treaty Education curriculum just based on history and everything I’ve learned and researched about. I feel it’s great we have a curriculum for treaty education, but personally I feel this curriculum could use more detail and explanation. If we were to look at Levin’s article and the Treaty Education curriculum side by side, we would see two completely different viewpoints and honestly a different approach to teaching and education in general, so I could presume there would have been some arguing over coming to an agreement on what should and should not be included within the Treaty education curriculum.