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Sunday, January 04, 2009
You can't get to Harvard on a dreamcatcher
Joseph Quesnel thinks that aboriginal culture in the classroom is a poor substitute for a rigorous curriculum that would improve aboriginal educational outcomes.
Quesnel, who has Metis ancestry from Quebec, is a policy analyst with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy who focuses on aboriginal issues.
In “You can’t get to Harvard on a dreamcatcher,” Quesnel writes:
Government initiatives to increase Aboriginal education outcomes – including the Ontario government's new Urban Aboriginal Education pilot project which would bring more aboriginal culture into the school curriculum – are fundamentally flawed.
Such initiatives seem to be based on the assumption that First Nations are failing academically because they are not learning enough about their culture, language and spiritual traditions.
In fact, Ontario government officials responsible for the Urban Aboriginal Education pilot project contend it will "give native pupils the confidence they need to do better in schools."
The fundamental flaw of this reasoning, which brings to mind the recent controversy surrounding the creation of an "Afro-centric" school curriculum in a Toronto school board, is the unproven assumption that Aboriginal students, and minority students in general, are failing because they lack cultural identity.
However, the real culprits are actually the lowering of standards of excellence which permeates our schools, as well as the reduction in the core subjects that will prepare students succeed in our modern, knowledge-based economy.
You can continue reading “You can’t get to Harvard on a dreamcatcher” here, but Quesnel main point is this: the focus on aboriginal culture has come at the expense of teaching core subject material, which is creating poor educational outcomes that will limit opportunities for aboriginals.
It is because of important work like this that Quesnel is #81 on the Western Standard’s Liberty 100.
Posted by westernstandard on January 4, 2009 | Permalink
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