Onderwijskrant

There is a longstanding debate among educators about how best to provide students with a well-rounded education. This debate, often defined as progressive vs. traditional, largely focuses on the proper role of specific content knowledge in the curriculum. Generally speaking, progressive educators favour a non-content specific learning process while traditional educators emphasize the importance of ensuring students learn specific content knowledge.

The 21st Century Learning movement, with its emphasis on non-content specific skills, critical thinking and creativity, is the latest manifestation of the progressive approach to education. A number of provinces, most notably Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, are currently making substantial curriculum changes to reflect the priorities of the 21st Century Learning movement.

If this trend continues, content knowledge will receive even less emphasis in classrooms than it does now. However, the shift away from content knowledge should give all Canadians cause for concern. The reality is that content knowledge is essential in all subject areas and at all grade levels. This report outlines three specific reasons in support of this position. First, content knowledge is essential for reading comprehension.

Reading is often described by educators as a transferable skill. This is only partially true. While the ability to decode individual words is largely transferable to different texts, the same cannot be said for reading comprehension. Students are most likely to comprehend what they are reading when they already know something about the topic. The more they already know, the more effectively they can read and understand. Simply put, reading comprehension depends on background knowledge. Second, content knowledge makes critical thinking possible.

In many schools, the development of critical thinking skills is considered more important than the acquisition of specific content knowledge. However, this assumption overlooks the fact that critical thinking cannot take place in the absence of specific content knowledge. Ignorant people do not think critically. While subject-specific content knowledge does not guarantee critical thinking, knowledge is a prerequisite for critical thinking to take place.

Third, content knowledge empowers students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Students do not come to school from equally advantageous circumstances. Far too many students come from low socioeconomic status (SES) homes where they have not had the same learning opportunities as their more affluent classmates. As a result, they enter school at a significant disadvantage. However, schools can compensate for this gap by ensuring that all students receive content-rich instruction from an early age. Providing all students with content-rich instruction is the key to empowering students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Students deserve the best education that teachers can provide.

Knowledge is a powerful thing and good teachers know how to make their subjects come alive. Teachers should be experts in their subject areas and not afraid to challenge their students to deepen their thinking. By restoring knowledge to its rightful place, we can help ensure that all students receive a top-quality education.

All Canadians agree that schools should be places of learning. There is also near-universal agreement that school is for everyone, not just for the privileged elite. This is one of the reasons why schooling is mandatory to age 16 or 18 in every Canadian province and territory. Whether students attend public school, private school, or homeschool, they must learn how to become productive citizens and take their place in Canadian society. Despite this broad-based consensus, there are significant disagreements about what effective instruction looks like. Some educators believe that the process of learning is more important than any specific content knowledge. They argue that it is more important for students to learn how to learn than to pass on a defined body of knowledge. This educational philosophy is often described as the progressive approach to education.

Progressive educators are more interested in helping students construct their own knowledge knowledge that has meaning to them than in making them memorize what they often consider to be a bunch of outdated and irrelevant facts. The 21st Century Learning movement, with its emphasis on non-content specific skills, specifically critical thinking and creativity, is the latest manifestation of the progressive approach to education. A number of provinces, most notably Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, are currently making substantial curriculum changes to reflect the priorities of the 21st Century Learning movement.

The objectives of the 21st Century Learning movement stand in sharp contrast with what is often described as the traditional approach to education. Traditional educators believe that there is a defined body of knowledge and skills that needs to be passed on to the next generation. Despite the widespread stereotype of traditionalists as old-fashioned and outdated, traditional educators are not opposed to new ideas, and they are certainly not against critical thinking and creativity having a place in schools. They just believe that schools are often too quick to throw out time-tested methods and subject matter that remain important for students to understand.

The educational leaders promoting the 21st Century Learning movement may have noble intentions, but they are misinformed about the procedures required for achieving their objectives. They truly believe that focusing on general skills such as critical thinking and creativity makes more sense than what progressive education author Alfie Kohn derisively refers to as the bunch o facts approach to education.43

After all, why make students memorize things that they can find through a quick Google search? These educators would rather help students sharpen their critical and creative thinking skills through well-designed inquiry projects in which they research and study topics of interest to them. However, what these educators fail to realize is that the best way to help students to become critical and creative thinkers is to provide them with contentrich instruction, especially in the early grades.

Meaningful reform begins with provincial education departments. Instead of reducing or downplaying the subject content in the curriculum, education officials, especially those who write curriculum guides, need to ensure that content in all curriculum documents and at all grade levels is substantial and logically sequential. When curriculum guides are largely devoid of specific content, it becomes tempting for teachers to simply ignore the lower objectives (knowing and comprehending) and focus on the higher objectives (critical and creative thinking) in their classrooms. This approach to instruction makes academic success less likely, especially for lower SES students. Whether the subject is math, science, English language arts, or social studies, there is no excuse for providing teachers with content-free curriculum guides. At the school division level, superintendents and principals should set a tone of support for content-rich instruction.

When educational leaders are interested in career advancement, it is tempting to use their schools or school divisions as laboratories for the latest progressive education fads. It looks impressive to equip schools with the latest technological gadgets or have students featured on television as they fundraise for a worthwhile social justice cause. However, the real work of education is found in classrooms day after day where teachers painstakingly help students master challenging academic content. Content-rich instruction may not be as flashy as some alternatives, but it is a whole lot more effective. As for teachers in public, private, and home schools, it is important to remember that content-rich instruction is meant to be engaging and empowering for students.

Learning content is much more than just memorizing a bunch of isolated facts, but it still includes memorizing these facts. Progressive educators are right to complain when some traditional teachers reduce students to passive vessels and subject them to hours of boring instruction.

But, progressive educators are wrong to say that students can learn to be critical and creative without knowing these facts. Knowledge is a powerful thing and good teachers know how to make their subjects come alive. Teachers should be experts in their subject areas and not afraid to challenge their students to deepen their thinking, by critically and creatively building on the facts they already know. Regular class discussions and debates should be hallmarks of learning everywhere.

But, these debates cannot be simply the expression of divergent opinions that are not tied to specific facts. Students deserve the best education that teachers can provide. By restoring knowledge to its rightful place, we can help ensure that all students receive a top-quality education.