Cross-Curricular Reflexive Writing 2 (Block 1)

            Pre­vi­ous­ly I reflect­ed on my per­son­al edu­ca­tion phi­los­o­phy as it per­tains to the ques­tion, “What is the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion?”  Since then, our class has dis­cussed what makes up class­room cul­ture and cli­mate, and we have con­tin­ued to learn of the his­to­ry relat­ed to res­i­den­tial schools.  Cana­da recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its first Nation­al Day for Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on Sep­tem­ber 30.  I first thought this hol­i­day meant that the trag­ic his­to­ry of res­i­den­tial schools was start­ing to be rec­og­nized nation­wide and that a path to pos­i­tive change for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion was being to be made. Sad­ly, it seems as a col­lec­tive whole, our nation still has a long way to go.  The provinces of Ontario and British Colum­bia have yet to make the hol­i­day into an offi­cial stat hol­i­day. More­over, my class­mate brought to my atten­tion that in Que­bec, the rul­ing CAQ gov­ern­ment out­right dis­missed acknowl­edg­ing the nation­al hol­i­day.  Pre­mier François Legault (2021) sug­gests that there is an eco­nom­ic bur­den by sup­port­ing this nation­al hol­i­day for reflec­tion:
            Lis­ten, all provinces have a chal­lenge to be com­pet­i­tive and pro­duc­tive. In Que­bec, when we look at the num­ber of days, the num­ber of hours worked in a year, we have work to do. So, I think there are many oth­er ways to mark, to com­mem­o­rate what hap­pened with the res­i­den­tial schools. (as cit­ed in Steuter-Mar­tin & War­ren, 2021, para. 25) 
The rejec­tion of this new nation­al hol­i­day in favor of being eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive and pro­duc­tive with oth­er Cana­di­an provinces is quite tone-deaf to the issue and is dis­re­spect­ful to the Indige­nous Peo­ples.  Actions speak loud­er than words, so what mes­sage are we send­ing by pri­or­i­tiz­ing our eco­nom­ics over rec­on­cil­i­a­tion?  The Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion of Cana­da (2015) states that for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to occur, there needs to be “aware­ness of the past, acknowl­edge­ment of the harm that has been inflict­ed, atone­ment for the caus­es, and action to change behav­iours” (p.6).  So what hap­pens when what I teach in the class­room is not reflect­ed in the greater com­mu­ni­ty out­side of school? How do I rec­on­cile that?

            I like­ly fol­low the philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive of pro­gres­sivism, which favors expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing and holis­tic learn­ing (Ardui­ni-Van Hoose, n.d.).  In par­tic­u­lar, I am a pro­po­nent of teach­ing using the scaf­fold­ing mod­el.  Scaf­fold­ing is some­times referred to as the “I do — We do — You do” method, where stu­dents learn and devel­op a new con­cept or skill by hav­ing the teacher first mod­el it for them, then work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly togeth­er in groups or as a class, and then final­ly hav­ing each indi­vid­ual stu­dent prac­tice it inde­pen­dent­ly (Grand Canyon Uni­ver­si­ty, 2020).  This man­ner of teach­ing seems very nat­ur­al to me.

            Despite my Prag­mat­ic ped­a­gogy lean­ings, when I con­sid­er how to incor­po­rate the First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing (FPPL) into my teach­ing by espous­ing the impor­tance of under­stand­ing Indige­nous Peo­ples’ cul­tur­al val­ues and his­to­ry, I start to won­der if I sub­scribe to the ‘con­struc­tivist’ school of phi­los­o­phy instead.   Con­struc­tivism is root­ed in the Prag­mat­ic ped­a­gogy and is branched off from the ‘Social Recon­struc­tivist’ phi­los­o­phy (Ardui­ni-Van Hoose, n.d.).  Orn­stein & Levine (2003, p.112) state that con­struc­tivism “empha­sizes social­ly inter­ac­tive and process-ori­ent­ed ‘hands-on’ learn­ing in which stu­dents work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to expand and revise their knowl­edge base” (as cit­ed in, Ardui­ni-Van Hoose, n.d.).  Ulti­mate­ly, I think teach­ing with prag­mat­ic method­olo­gies with the intent of pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive social change is one of my goals as an educator. 

            Pro­mot­ing social change is like­ly one sup­port­ed by British Columbia’s cur­rent school cur­ricu­lum. The cur­ricu­lum is cur­rent­ly inspired by the goals of the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD).  Based on their defined 21st cen­tu­ry com­pe­ten­cies, the OECD wants edu­ca­tion to focus on cre­at­ing a class of glob­al work­ers who can crit­i­cal­ly think and work col­lec­tive­ly with a sense of co-agency (p.23).  Using edu­ca­tion to sup­port the cre­ation of a cheap and effi­cient labour force is com­mon to Canada’s edu­ca­tion­al his­to­ry.  In his 1847 report to the Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly, Egerton Ryer­son rec­om­mend­ed a board­ing school mod­el that would train stu­dents in reli­gion and man­u­al labour (Rob­son, 2019, pp.70–71).  More­over, for the Indige­nous pop­u­la­tion, he rec­om­mend­ed they receive agri­cul­tur­al train­ing so that they would move toward a “farm­ing lifestyle” (Rob­son, 2019, p.71).  Even though landown­ers want­ed cheap labour to work their farm­lands, his­to­ry has shown that res­i­den­tial schools were less about cre­at­ing a cheap agri­cul­ture work force and more about forced assim­i­la­tion and cul­tur­al geno­cide towards the Indige­nous peoples.

            In their 1976 book, School­ing in Cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­ca: Edu­ca­tion­al Reform and the Con­tra­dic­tions of Eco­nom­ic Life, Bowles and Gin­tis argue that Amer­i­can schools were designed to sup­port the class sys­tem and ben­e­fit the elite class (Rob­son, 2019, p.24).  By using a “hid­den cur­ricu­lum,” they sug­gest­ed that stu­dents were sub­tly taught to be co-oper­a­tive mem­bers of the class sys­tem, and thus were being social­ized to accept their class place­ment in the cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my (as cit­ed in Rob­son, 2019, p.24).  I can­not help but feel there are some par­al­lels here with the OECD goals and B.C.’s cur­rent school cur­ricu­lum.  The cur­rent Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards for BC Edu­ca­tors sup­ports diver­si­ty but it isn’t sole­ly for the sake of sup­port­ing the world­views of Indige­nous peo­ples as it states, “Edu­ca­tors respect and val­ue the diver­si­ty in their class­rooms, schools and com­mu­ni­ties, inclu­sive of First Nations, Inu­it and Métis, and oth­er [empha­sis added] world­views and per­spec­tives” (BCTC, 2019, p.2).  What hap­pens when the oth­er glob­al world­views and per­spec­tives clash with ones from our local com­mu­ni­ty or First Nations peo­ples? For exam­ple, I was tak­en aback when one of the OECD videos we saw in class sug­gest­ed the inclu­sion of Indige­nous peo­ples’ world­view is impor­tant because Indige­nous youth are a grow­ing demo­graph­ic and Cana­da has an aging pop­u­la­tion.  I felt that it was like say­ing we need to val­ue First Nations because we need them to become the new labour force to finan­cial­ly sup­port retiree pen­sions or even work for them as care­givers.  It did not seem so respect­ful to me.  While I can respect­ful­ly teach about dif­fer­ent world­views and let my stu­dents make their own con­clu­sions, I feel that some social top­ics are just as taboo as some knowl­edge is con­sid­ered sacred to the First Nations peo­ple.

                                                            Ref­er­ences.
Ardui­ni-Van Hoose, N. (n.d.). Teach­ing phi­los­o­phy . Hud­son Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege.
            Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/edpsy/chapter/teaching-philosophy/
            License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-A-like

BCTC. (2019). Pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards for BC edu­ca­tors — fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions (FAQs) [Brochure].

            Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards_faq.pdf

Grand Canyon Uni­ver­si­ty. No Author. What is scaf­fold­ing in edu­ca­tion? (Decem­ber 23, 2020).

            Retrieved from https://www.gcu.edu/blog/teaching-school-administration/what-scaffolding-edu­ca­tion

OECD. 2020. Cur­ricu­lum (re)design [Brochure].

            Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/contact/brochure-thematic-reports-on-curriculum-redesign.pdf

Rob­son, K. L. (2019). Soci­ol­o­gy of Edu­ca­tion in Cana­da. Press­books.
            Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/robsonsoced/
Steuter-Mar­tin & War­ren. (Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021) Peo­ple mark Nation­al Day for Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with events across Que­bec. CBC News.
            Retrieved https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation-quebec‑1.6195039

Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion of Cana­da.  (2015). Hon­our­ing the truth, rec­on­cil­ing for the future — Sum­ma­ry of the final report of the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion of Cana­da.
            Retrieved from https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR4‑7–2015-eng.pdf