Conclusion: What We Have Said about the Learning
System
Our vision of curriculum is very broad: it begins with the traditional -
and we think very proper - concern that children acquire essential
foundation skills; these have always meant literacy and numeracy, have
long included scientific thinking, and now, we strongly believe, also
include computer literacy and the skills needed to work and learn with and
from others.
From the beginning, however, we have talked about more than the
traditional curriculum; in fact, we have talked about more than the
program of schools. Our discussion and recommendations are directed at
understanding and improving the learning system, as an integrated whole,
one that stretches beyond school walls, not merely beyond classroom walls.
Traditionally, discussions of curriculum begin with the curriculum of
Grade 1; sometimes they include kindergarten. But we look at the learning
system as beginning at birth and with children's first teachers: their
parents. We hope that throughout these pages, with their many issues and
recommendations, people see clearly that we have not deviated from our
conviction that parents are the first and most important teachers, and
that the influence of parents and schools on learners is intertwined and
inextricable.
Many of our recommendations stress the need to increase knowledge and
communication in both directions, and to share more information and
authority between the two. There are two reasons we want parents to know
what children can and should be expected to learn at every age and stage
in their development: first, so parents can be effective as educators in
their own right; and second, so they can be effective as emissaries and
advocates for their children at school.
It is in the child's interest as a learner that parents be very well
informed and very powerful. That is why we speak of the need for parents
to be told and be aware of what the curriculum is, what the expected
learning outcomes are, and what standards of achievement are considered
acceptable in foundation subjects.
Our recommendations on building assessment expertise in teachers are
also designed to improve both teaching and learning, and to make more
information available to parents and the public about what is being taught
and learned. The same is true of our recommendations concerning
system-wide curriculum reviews, and of our recommendation that a
standardized and informative report card (the Ontario Student Achievement
Report) be sent to all parents.
We have said that learning begins at birth, so our discussion of the
school curriculum begins for children at age 3. We have recommended that
full-time schooling be available across Ontario for children of that age.
While this would be routine in some countries, it certainly is not in
Canada: we are well aware that some people may look on our recommendation
for universal early childhood education as an unnecessary or unaffordable
luxury too expensive to provide universally, if at all.
Having reviewed the evidence of the effectiveness of such programs, we
are convinced, however, that Ontario cannot afford not to have them. Our
children are in school longer than most others; we spend significant sums
of money on remedial and special education programs. Yet, in spite of
these programs and expenditures, the overall achievment level of our
students is not outstanding. And while many, many children receive an
excellent public education in Ontario, there are still some hard truths to
be faced: only a minority achieve what can be called high-level literacy;
a large minority don't make it through high school; and, within some
disadvantaged groups, that minority comes perilously close to, or even
reaches, majority status.
We want what we believe most people in Ontario want: more children to be
better educated, and the irreplacable asset of an excellent education to
be owned equally by all our children. Excellent early childhood education
is one big step toward achieving those goals. There are any number of
reasons why that is so, but a central one is that, from infancy, children
are acquiring ideas about cause and effect, about comparison and contrast,
about quantity - in short, about the most fundamental building blocks of
thinking and learning; by the time they are three years old,
knowledgeable, skilled, and caring teachers can make a real difference for
them.
Beginning school earlier gives children advantages. But those can be
lost if the emphasis on teaching and monitoring the acquisition of
foundation skills, especially language skills, is not maintained
throughout elementary and secondary education and most especially during
the first three years of compulsory schooling.
We have taken the position that almost all children should have mastered
the basic literacy skills before the end of Grade 3, and we have
recommended a universal literacy test (as well as a numeracy test) at that
point, on the understanding that significant steps will have been taken
one or two years earlier to help children who are having problems.
While we know that many children will continue to need support
throughout the common curriculum years, and that some individual learning
difficulties require on-going special attention, we have no doubt that
early education and early help will prevent an enormous amount of
frustration and suffering. It is the first essential step the system can
take toward creating a better-educated populace.
We stress continuity. Children pass through teacher after teacher, class
after class, and school after school, from their early years until they
leave secondary school. Yes, interests and aptitudes grow and change, but
the singularity and consistency of the person is always apparent.
It is very difficult for teachers or schools to have such a
comprehensive view of a student, but we argue that unless schools can do
better than they do now, students' education will remain too fragmented
and too discontinuous, with consequences for the individual and the system
- at the least, very wasteful of talent and fulfillment, and, at worst,
truly destructive.
To improve continuity for students, we have recommended that beginning
at the start of their compulsory schooling in Grade 1, there be one person
at the child's school who is responsible for knowing the child and the
child's record, so that as year succeeds year, and teacher succeeds
teacher, there is someone who is aware of whether that child is
progressing at a normal rate, who makes certain that the new teacher has a
good idea of what the child?s strengths and needs are, and who can speak
to the parents as an informed and concerned representative of the school.
And, at the point where schools become more specialized and children have
several different subject teachers, and teachers have far more students
than they can know well individually, we have recommended that this
case-management function become much more personal and hands-on, and that
all students have a teacher-advisor or the like, someone who not only
remains aware of their overall progress, but who actually meets with them
often, and with their parents at least twice annually, and who assists
them with educational and career planning in an informed but informal way.
The tool that we recommend as both a facilitator and a record of this
process is the Cumulative Educational Plan (CEP), which is a comprehensive
planning tool for the student. We say comprehensive because, as we stated
earlier, we do not believe that it is helpful for schools to ignore what
students are learning and developing an interest in outside of school. We
have made much of the importance of what we call community-based career
awareness, by which we mean that the whole community is a child?s school,
and that schools must act accordingly. The curriculum must take students
out of the classroom, by foot and by computer; and the school must insist
that the resources of the community become the resources of the learning
system for students. Thus we build in a community career co-ordinator for
the younger grades, and a career education specialist for the older ones,
and put considerable emphasis on the continuity of career education from
beginning to end.
And we expect the CEP to include information on what the student is
learning in the community that has implications for her school program and
for her future. A concrete example is international languages, where
community resources often exceed school resources: many children develop
fluency and literacy in international languages outside of school. We
strongly suggest that such knowledge become part of their record, and that
they be encouraged to put their knowledge to a test, when they reach Grade
10, and receive both advanced placement and credits toward their diploma
for that knowledge. We see this kind of encouragement of learning,
wherever it happens, as enriching the community as well as the individual.
As soon as one considers the curriculum to be more than what is taught
in classrooms, one begins to appreciate the advantages, as well as the
necessity, of greater flexibility in the learning system. At the school
level, we suggest that 10 percent of the curriculum be available for local
definition; that the common curriculum occupy at least 90 percent of the
learning agenda from Grades 1 though 9. Depending on the physical
environment and geography of the school and community, and/or on its
social environment and human geography, a school (its teachers, its
parents, its community helpers) may decide to put a special focus on an
environmental study project, on a social history project, or on some other
worthwhile endeavour that can enhance students' knowledge and skills, and
perhaps also benefit the larger community.
At the individual level, flexibility in what is learned, and at what
pace, has always been necessary, just as individual variation has always
been inevitable. But it has been difficult for schools to provide the
necessary flexibility, for many reasons. It will continue to be so: any
system that tries to provide for everyone will have difficulty in
providing for those who are farthest from the average. However, we firmly
believe it is possible to do better, and extremely important to try. Hence
we draw attention to a few schools that have made real efforts to diminish
the lock-step nature of learning by allowing students to use the whole
12-month calendar or more, or much less, rather than insisting that
learning comes in packages of 10 months only. And we have recommended more
use of all the techniques that make it easier for students to learn at the
pace right for them: acceleration for students who can move faster,
individual learning assessment (challenge exams and prior learning
assessment), and intensive, accelerated, and immediate catch-up courses
for students from the elementary years through adulthood. We know this is
an area that requires greater skill and will from educators, and we have
urged the Minister of Education and Training to provide leadership and
support for those who are willing to work at developing models and
strategies to increase flexibility for learners.
There is another kind of flexibility we are committed to as well, and we
hope our readers are aware of it, though it is perhaps written between our
lines as much as within them. That is the flexibility we believe is the
best way to encourage responsibility and creativity. Our recommendations
stress clarity about ends, not means. Thus, we think teachers and parents
must have clarity about intended learning outcomes and standards; and
about the essential components of a course, whether it is Grade 7 math or
Grade 11 geography.
As well, we think the principles we have emphasized - continuity,
stewardship, flexibility for learners, learning without walls are
tremendously important everywhere. But we also believe there are as many
ways of teaching an excellent Grade 7 math or Grade 11 art course as there
are excellent math and art teachers; and as many ways of building strong
relationships between students, teachers, parents, and the community on
behalf of learning as there are caring and committed professionals and
parents. We do believe that much good can be achieved by offering people
teachers, parents, volunteers - training, and the opportunity to work
together to come up with their own strategies for supporting those
principles, in ways that will work in their schools and their communties.
The same principles that we have developed and discussed in talking
about younger learners apply to older ones as well. Older students also
need well-informed parents who are on comfortable terms with their
teachers; students continue to need a teacher who knows them and acts on
their behalf; and they continue to need flexibility in learning time. But,
in addition, as our children pass beyond the age of the common curriculum,
when all of them are meant to be acquiring that bank of knowledge and
essential thinking and learning skills that every one of them needs, they
must be given opportunities for making choices based on what they have
learned about themselves and the world. By the time a young person reaches
Grade 10 in the learning system we have envisioned, she is ready to make
some decisions - not irreversible, by any means, but very important
nonetheless about what direction she wants to take, not only in secondary
school, but afterward. This has traditionally been the case; secondary
education has always meant the point at which options increase and
alternative paths open up.
But an abiding concern, in the last 50 years at least, has been how to
increase options and open up paths in a way that is inclusive, and doesn't
leave out those students who come to school with fewer advantages, less "social
capital" in the form of parents with higher education, more money,
and the like. In our opinion, differences in interest and aptitude, which
is what program options should accommodate, have become confused with
differences in social class and social rewards. Hence, we have a secondary
system organized by "levels," which come to be thought of as
reflecting the inherent and unalterable ability levels of individual
students, but which in fact reflect best such other factors as parents'
occupations, education, and income levels, and sometimes also race or home
language or national origin.
Our concern in making recommendations to reform and improve education
beyond the years of the common curriculum is to continue to strengthen
core knowledge and skill areas for all students, while at the same time
making alternative paths as clear and as open to everyone as is possible.
So, for example, we redefine the courses that are offered as falling into
three kinds, which do not in our mind speak of greater or lesser ability,
but of different degrees of emphasis along a continuum between applied and
academic. We make the point that it is courses, not students, that fall
into one or another of these three categories. Thus, in Grade 10, a
student might choose a science course that emphasizes practical
applications (an Ontario Applied Course, or OApC); a history course that
puts more emphasis on a traditional academic approach (an Ontario Academic
Course, or OAcC); and a music course that attempts to maintain an even
balance between applied and academic emphasis (a common course). Such a
student may be one who thinks of going on to a technical course at a
college but who has a strong avocational interest in history, or one who
wants to study social sciences at a university and also wants to have an
intelligent layperson's understanding of basic science.
While we are aware that no plan, however flexible, can overcome social
preferences, prejudices, and rewards that favour academic over applied
skills, and university over college education, we do believe that it is
plausible that a system such as we suggest could increase students'
options, and result in a better match between interest and talent on the
one hand and useful post-secondary education on the other.
For this to happen, colleges and universities must co-operate with
secondary educators to redefine entrance requirements. The object would be
to define these in both a clearer and a more differentiated way than at
present. Now, universities, for the most part, look at students' marks in
their last year only, and insist on prerequisite courses defined as
pre-university in all those six final OACs. While this is clear enough, it
is very undifferentiated; a student who wants to study history must take
the same science course as a peer who wants to be a chemist, or else take
no science course at all. Colleges, for their part, have no such blanket
rule; but while they show greater flexibility, the paths to college are
very confused and unclear for students, except in cases where individual
colleges and secondary schools have worked out specific articulation
programs.
We have recommended that schools, colleges, and universities define "packages"
of courses that lead to particular college and university programs, and
that these packages include the appropriate OApCs, OAcCs, and common
courses for each post-secondary program.
We have also recommended that schools organize themselves into
relatively small units, and that these units (which will most often be
small schools within large buildings, sharing administrators and some
facilities and courses) might have a subject or career focus, such as is
now available in a few cities in schools that have an arts academy or a
science academy. In such "academies," students who are
interested in a career in art history or arts administration, in
engineering or in electronics, can find a curriculum that has a clear
relationship to their interests and - if course packages have been defined
collaboratively as we suggest - to their future.
As much as we want adolescents and young adults to feel the connection
between their formal education and their future - and we strongly endorse
such out-of-school learning experiences as co-operative education and
community service, both as emphases within courses and as experiences in
themselves - we are also concerned that there are commonalities in
education and learning that must not be lost sight of. All students want
to understand the practical applications of what they are learning;
similarly, all students need a high level of literacy no matter what
career interest they may pursue.
Our recommendations concerning the common needs of secondary students
speak of the necessity for certain outcomes as prerequisite to graduation.
Thus, we suggest that there must be specified learner outcomes at the end
of Grade 12, just as there are for the lower grades; and that these
outcomes must include a majority that are common to all learners, as well
as some that are specific to courses offered as OApCs or OAcCs. And we
recommend an increase in the amount of province-wide curriculum and
examination review at this level, as well as earlier, so that educators
and the public can know how successfully the curriculum is being learned,
and so that some consistency is guaranteed across teachers and schools.
We also call for a more efficient system at this level, one that does
not encourage students to extend their stay in secondary school by a year
or two beyond what is necessary to take the required number of courses and
graduate. While we make it clear that we continue to support flexibility
in learning time, and have no intention of making matters more difficult
for students who need longer to complete their course of study for
legitimate reasons connected to how they learn, or to other circumstances
in their life, we do not wish to see the majority of students take longer
than three years, beginning in Grade 10, to complete their diploma. No
other province keeps most of its students in secondary school so long, and
there is no clear advantage to doing so, but considerable expenditure that
we believe is better spent early than late. Hence we make recommendations
designed to limit the number of credits students may accumulate before
they graduate.
As well, we call for a universal literacy test to be given first in
Grade 11, and to be passed eventually before a student can receive a
diploma. The emphasis that we have put on literacy, beginning at age 3,
culminates here in a literacy guarantee: what we believe should be a
promise to the public that any high school graduate in Ontario can read
and understand, and can write and convey information and feeling, as an
educated adult should be able to do.
Consistent with our emphasis on continuity of concern for students'
progress, we suggest that secondary schools maintain contact with and
support for students until they are 18 years old, whether or not they
remain in school to finish their diploma. Students need help with the
transition to work, not only to post-secondary education, and until they
are 18, school should be there for them, just as it is for their peers who
are going on with their education.
And just as we began our discussion of the formal learning system before
age 6, we do not end it at age 18. The increasing number of adults wanting
to complete their secondary education deserve the same opportunity as
younger learners, and we recommend that space be guaranteed them in the
public system. As well, we strongly recommend that the literacy guarantee
that we want our school system to make be also a literacy promise for
adults who, for whatever reasons, wish to become fluent and literate in
either of the official languages. Those adults include, after all, parents
and future parents, grandparents and future grandparents, whose literacy
is perhaps the most significant part of the learning legacy they pass on
to their children and grandchildren.
ISBN 0-7778-3577-0
©Copyright
1994, Queens Printer for Ontario
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