Opinion: Children are capable of studying a knowledge-rich world history program

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By Janine Gorman

Alberta’s social studies curriculum is back in the news. Last week, the Ministry of Education announced that public consultations are now open on a revised program of study for kindergarten to Grade 6.

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A draft of the new curriculum has not yet been released to the public, but early signals suggest that the Ministry of Education has backed down from the controversial, history-focused approach initially proposed by the government of Jason Kenney.

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When the previous UCP government released their draft of a new social studies curriculum more than two years ago, I admit that I was one of the teachers who thought it should be trashed.

At first glance, the new curriculum seems too challenging for young children. Why learn about the Qin Dynasty, which began over 2,000 years ago in China, when many students cannot yet differentiate a week from a month, or name the city and province in which they live? How can children be expected to understand the social hierarchies of ancient Egypt when they are still learning the importance of treating others fairly?

My perspective drastically shifted when I began teaching grade one in a classical charter school using a curriculum not unlike the one previously proposed by Alberta Education. As it turns out, young children are not only capable of studying a knowledge-rich world history program, but they’re also genuinely excited by it.  

The students are entranced by the stories we read, and they are developing familiarity with different world civilizations. They are starting to identify the universal needs of all human groups and are learning to contrast the ways that different civilizations approached the same problems, such as developing a method to record their ideas.

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The opposition to this approach reflects a common belief among some educators that content must be centred on the student and made relevant to their immediate, daily lives. Only in more advanced grades should they begin to learn about history, though not in a systematic or rigorous way. This is called the “expanding horizons” approach, and it assumes that young children are either not capable or interested in learning about faraway times and places.

Proponents of this approach often hold a related belief that teaching children specific content knowledge stifles their creativity and critical thinking skills.

Far from diminishing their reasoning skills, the use of a knowledge- and history-rich curriculum gives students factual information from which deeper reasoning and inquiry flow. Giving students the bigger picture allows them to connect their own identities to a broader historical context. It lets them see that they belong to something greater than themselves.

There’s no need to take my word for it. A new study in the United States confirms that students whose schools adopted the “Core Knowledge” curriculum performed, on average, 16 percentile points above comparable students in other schools (both the previous draft curriculum and our school’s program draw inspiration from the Core Knowledge curriculum). The impact was even greater among the most socio-economically disadvantaged students.

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Given the evidence, what’s the real reason that Alberta’s educational establishment was so adamantly opposed to the knowledge-rich approach? Part of the answer is that the majority of teachers – and most members of our generation, really – did not receive this kind of education ourselves.

While, at first, it was daunting to be asked to teach content I didn’t know, in reading through our history resources and analyzing the content alongside my colleagues, it became clear that this approach can inspire even the youngest of learners.

Throughout history, civilizations endured by passing along the inherited wisdom, stories, and knowledge of those who came before them. In our time, the link between past and present has nearly been broken. But it is not too late to reforge it.

Janine Gorman is a Grade 1 teacher at Calgary Classical Academy. 

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