Sarah Kriekle, co-organizer of Tuesday's protest against Alberta's current Draft K-6 Curriculum. (rdnewsNOW)

By Sheldon Spackman

Rewrite Requested

Alberta curriculum protest moves online

Apr 6, 2021 | 5:54 PM

Alberta’s new Draft K-6 Curriculum was the focus of an online protest held across the province Tuesday.

The event was to be held outside Education Minister Adriana LaGrange’s constituency office in north Red Deer before moving online due to the recent surge in COVID-19 variant cases.

Co-organizer Sarah Kriekle says that decision was reinforced by Red Deer RCMP, who came to her home Tuesday morning.

“They informed me that holding a public event in contravention of the Public Health Act would lead to a charge, which is a little bit intimidating to have an officer show up at my house,” she admitted. “It just leads me to wonder how the Grace Life Church organizers are able to continue operating without any charges.”

The Albertans Reject Curriculum Draft Group offered a variety of perspectives on the proposed new curriculum during the protest held via Facebook live.

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Speakers included Kelly Aleman from ATA Region #60, Red Deer elementary teacher Allan Baile, and NDP Caucus members Sarah Hoffman and David Eggen, among others.

Hoffman, the NDP’s education critic, says the government is replacing a decades-old curriculum with one that’s even more out dated.

“We’ve heard from parents, teachers, school districts, Indigenous leaders, and Albertans in large, that this curriculum is failed, that it needs to be rewritten, and we agree,” said Hoffman. “The curriculum is based on forcing young children to memorize long lists of trivia, rather than building their understanding and their learning and fostering critical thinking. And it actually contains some factual errors in several subjects.”

Hoffman suggests the curriculum is based on what Premier Jason Kenney would like Alberta students to learn.

“Replacing many components of Canadian history with American history, and it deliberately delays the teaching of art, faith, and culture that are from non-European backgrounds,” added Hoffman. “This Draft violates the calls to action for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, specifically where it says learning about residential schools should start in Kindergarten. This Draft doesn’t do that until Grade 5.”

Aleman feels the current Draft contains two big lies, with those being that Alberta’s education system is failing and that teachers in Alberta are anti oil and gas.

“She (Adriana LaGrange) cherry picked some examples to try to prove her point, which again, to teachers, was quite insulting,” said Aleman. “Then she stacked her panel full of experts, and instead of active teachers, she had some teachers that hadn’t been in the classroom for many, many years, and then people like Chris Champion who’s super problematic, and some other American experts. So you get a flavour of American history there.”

Aleman describes the draft curriculum as a mess.

“Piloting this stuff makes it look like we’re consenting and I think that’s not what we want to do. We need to get back to the drawing board with meaningful teacher input.”

Baile, who teaches at at Aspen Heights Elementary School, was blunt with his assessment.

“I am actually completely appalled by the lack of respect shown by the UCP government to so many important and noteworthy professionals, parents, and community partners. The newer, or should I say antiquated, problematic social studies curriculum, to me, is a complete campfire starter. It’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on,” he blasted.

“All I see is an authoritarian UCP government ramming down their own ideological views. Perhaps it is time for the 12-member curricular advisory team to step forward and to explain how they arrived at such a regressive curriculum in the year 2021.”

Baile suggested there is also a disproportionate focus on religion, age inappropriate material, little mention of the LGBTQ2S+ community, and developmentally flawed content in areas such as physical education and health and wellness.

“By politicizing the curriculum, the UCP government is using students as pawns, merely to be manipulated and controlled,” concluded Baile. “We all need to ask each other, what is their end game? This Daft curriculum needs a total rewrite from start to finish. This Draft curriculum is a disaster.”

RELATED: Parts of Alberta’s draft school curriculum plagiarized, academic finds