COLUMN: Think Again – Ontario’s curriculum changes fall short

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/07/2020 (1779 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives promised to scrap “discovery math” and replace it with a “back-to-basics” approach. Earlier this week, the Ontario government took a small step in this direction by releasing a new math curriculum.

Discovery math is a progressive approach that encourages students to invent their own strategies for solving equations. Traditional methods such as practice and memorization are derided as “drill and kill.”

As a result, students spend hours working on open-ended word problems with no obvious solution. When faced with basic arithmetic, elementary students regularly pull out their calculators to solve the simplest of questions.

Fortunately, the Ontario government’s new math curriculum restores things that should never have been removed in the first place. For example, students will now be required to recall number facts and memorize their multiplication tables up to twelve times twelve.

Parents will also be pleased that Ontario’s new math curriculum has a much stronger emphasis on financial literacy. By Grades 4 and 5, students will learn about various payment methods, including e-transfers, while Grade 8 students will focus on balancing budgets and the perils of compound interest. This makes sense. Financial literacy is important for everyone.

However, announcing a new curriculum is only a start. If the Ontario government is serious about kicking discovery math to the curb, it needs to have a proper implementation plan. Unfortunately, there are signs that the Ford government isn’t up to the task.

For example, Ontario’s education minister must face down heavy resistance from his own department officials. Many of the people working in education departments come from the ranks of education superintendents and curriculum consultants, most of whom have climbed the career ladder by espousing progressive education ideas and enacting progressive policies.

It’s not hard to find evidence of their handiwork. For example, the education department’s implementation guide for teachers contains statements that undermine the government’s ostensible goal of abolishing discovery math. While the guide pays lip service to the importance of memorizing math facts, it also states that repeated practice, or drills, “do not contribute to understanding.” The guide also recommends that teachers spend lots of time exploring various strategies before getting students to memorize the standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

In other words, teachers can go right on using discovery math textbooks such as “Math Makes Sense.”

To make matters worse, many of the experts cited in the government’s implementation guide are propagandists for discovery math. For example, the guide quotes Alex Lawson of Lakehead University as saying that children should learn math facts by “using an increasingly sophisticated series of strategies rather than by jumping directly to memorization.” In other words, memorization if necessary, but not necessarily memorization.

The new curriculum also contains a whole lot of mumbo jumbo about “social emotional learning skills.” Students will be expected to “build awareness about others” and “understand things they have in common with their peers and what makes different groups unique.” Apparently, student self-esteem is now a key part of math instruction.

Anyone who has ever watched the British political satire television show, “Yes Minister,” knows exactly what is going on here. Politicians say one thing during their press conferences while the bureaucrats who work for them quietly sabotage their plans.

In short, Ontario politicians are in over their heads. If they truly want to replace discovery math with a back-to-basics approach, they cannot simply release a new curriculum and trust their department officials to carry it out.

Unless the Ontario government gets a handle on the education file, their new math curriculum will quickly turn into a very expensive shell game.

 

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and a Steinbach city councillor. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.