I am very concerned about the direction being taken with the new curriculum for BC students.
We are in a time of grave environmental peril. Our governments are waging a sustained and successful war against the development of an informed, involved, and environmentally knowledgeable citizenry. They reduce scientific research on the environment; they muzzle environmental scientists from speaking out; they reduce the budgets for park interpreters who teach us about our local ecosystems; they close environmental education facilities like the Freshwater Ecology Centre in Duncan that was a world class experience in understanding our world. They are more interested in building dams than protecting fisheries, and they even spy on concerned citizens who might want to make their views known on environmental issues. And now they are turning their attention to the next generation of concerned citizens.
In the new BC curriculum, the Ministry of Education was asked to include environmental education and they refused. We need to understand that something is going on in our schools that could put a whole generation, and indeed our futures, at risk. We need to demand that changes be made.
In the proposed new curriculum for elementary schools there has been a reassignment of environmental topics to different grade levels, and the removal of important ecological concepts altogether. Such changes appear to create some very negative consequences.
One very negative consequence is the financial hit to our schools. When topics are changed in such a manner from grade to grade, with very little pedagogical justification, it causes an immense expense for our already under-funded educational system. For example, when the topic of animal physical and behavioural adaptations is switched from grade four to grade one, a very questionable change based on the complexity of the concepts, teachers cannot reassign resources to the new grade level. New materials must be produced, at great cost, so that they are age appropriate for reading and content. It is the same with the study of light and sound, once a grade four topic but now regulated to grade one, making all of the school’s investments in books, posters, units, and kits worthless.
Another even more serious negative consequence is the diminishment of environmental education. Becoming an ecoliterate citizen, who in turn creates an ecoliterate society, is rapidly becoming one of the most important knowledge sets for our future. In many jurisdictions, environmental education is deemed so important that it is required at each grade level, is integrated into all socials studies and science topics, appears on the report card as a separate area of assessment, and is the subject matter around which whole schools and curriculums are organized. Teaching about the environment is a significant unifying theme that children can relate to, and a very effective teaching method. Yet the new BC curriculum destroys the cohesiveness of what little environmental education we had. At grade four, where students currently study weather, and its impacts on humans, different habitats and ecosystems, food chains, and adaptations of animals to survive, we have the strongest focus on ecology in the elementary years. This has been replaced with the study of atoms and molecules, ten forms of energy, and the rock cycle. Hardly “Big Idea” topics that 9 year olds get passionate about. This fragmented approach to science, taking science concepts out of context of a study of our world, is more reminiscent of 1960s-era science where topics were broken apart into small, almost meaningless nano-bites of information, where it was quite difficult for students to find meaningful applications to their own lives. It is the type of content that can destroy the development of an early interest in science and life on our planet.
Let’s compare how science is organized now to the proposed arrangement of big ideas in the new curriculum. The existing curriculum has a strong structure for the development of environmental science. Science is divided into three areas: Life Science, Physical Science, and Earth and Space Science. Life Science has the most environmental education and is described as the study of the diversity, continuity, interactions, and balances among organisms and their environment, to extend students’ understanding of the living world and their place in it. Other topics in Physical, and Earth and Space science could also contribute to the development of environmental literacy.
There is a clear introduction and development of the basic concepts of ecology. By grade seven, one could reasonably hope that students had a rudimentary knowledge of how our planet works and what their role is in it.
Unfortunately, environmental goals are not so clear, or so well developed within the proposed curriculum. The New Curriculum completely does away with the term “Life Sciences” and instead uses biology, physics, chemistry, and Earth/space science as the areas of science. In the new explanation of science, there is a purposeful exclusion of the term “Life Science,” which instead is referred to as biology. These are not child-centred science terms.
Gone are all the current age appropriate studies of animals, adaptations, behaviours, and food chains. Gone is the study of weather and its impact on humans. Gone is any direct reference to aboriginal concepts of environmental stewardship. It does indicate in the science overview that, through a First Nations perspective, a connection will be made to ecology, but that does not exist in the Concepts and Content portion of the guide. Instead what we have is a study of atoms, energy, and rocks!
In social studies, there have also been disappointing changes. In the existing elementary curriculum social studies guide there are learning outcomes like:
• Kindergarten – Explore ways to care for their environment
• Grade One – Explore characteristics of environments. Examine how the environment affects daily life and find ways for caring for the environment
• Grade Two – Demonstrate responsibility for the environment
• Grade Three – Demonstrate responsibility for the environment
• Grade Four – Examine Aboriginal relationships with the land
• Grade Five – Explore the sustainable harvesting of resources
• Grade Six – Examine relationship between cultures and their environments
• Grade Seven – Study the effect of humans on the environment of ancient civilizations
In the new socials curriculum, the concept of responsibility for the environment is completely erased. Instead of a year-by-year, sequential development of the awareness of the need for environmental stewardship, students are merely asked to investigate the relationship between a community and its environment.
This new curriculum fragments and confounds concepts of environmental education and is not good enough to create responsible citizens, who are able to make informed decisions about their concerns for their planet, and thus, hopefully sustain our world for future generations. It might, however, create a generation of woefully environmentally-ignorant citizens who will not protest logging of old growth forest, or vote against increased oil tanker traffic, or ask for sustainable transportation solutions. Surely the role of our schools in the 21st century is greater than that.
I believe the science and socials curriculums need to be reorganized to include clearly-identified big ideas of Ecology and Environmental Social Responsibility, and it is everyone’s job to tell their community leaders that they are concerned too, so we can change the direction of this misguided curriculum transformation.
You can explore the new science curriculum and comment at www.curriculum.gov.bc.ca/
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Lenny Ross has a MA in Environmental Education and is a Grade 4/5 teacher for the Greater Victoria School District. He is also a concerned grampa.
