Editor: I read in the paper (The Times, Oct. 9) that the department of education is proposing a 鈥渘ew curriculum鈥� whereby all the provincial schools will now focus on collaborative learning.
Our children are now in their 40s.
When they were elementary school age, we lived in Cloverdale and took them on a long drive every morning to Discovery School in northwest Whalley.
Discovery School had a curriculum approved both by the department of education and the Surrey School District.
That curriculum sounds exactly the same as that now being proposed by the department in 2015, in that it specializes in 鈥渋ndividualized, student-driven learning in collaborative settings.鈥�
Back then, gone were the 鈥渞ows of desks with the teacher lecturing from the front of the room.鈥�
The kids often sat around on the floor, or found space in the library or hallway.
Memorizing tests was also long gone. The kids worked together, even different age groups, to create projects. The projects were based on a topic that they chose as a group, say Greece or the solar system.
The teacher鈥檚 job was to ensure that the various school subjects ended up in the final project: math, science, social studies, English.
Report cards were also long gone. How did we, as parents, know how well our child was doing?
We went to the school on Parent Day and reviewed the projects.
We saw what each child contributed, and we saw what our own child contributed. We asked each of our four kids on that day, how well they thought they had done.
Usually they felt pretty good about what they had accomplished. But on some occasions, the answers were sometimes a surprise.
If they felt that they had let down their team members, they told us. They sometimes felt they could have done better. Obviously, there were no repercussions on our part. They knew what they had to do next time 鈥� and they told us that, too.
This whole program was based on Adlerian philosophy, where each child/person has an inherent need to belong. Alfred Adler was a contemporary of Freud, whose teachings have long outlived old Sigmund.
Adler lived about 100 years ago. Discovery School had been going on in Surrey for 48 years.
The question is, how come it has taken so long for the province to 鈥渄iscover鈥� this 鈥渘ew鈥� curriculum?
Evan Brett,
Aldergrove
