Lexi Bainas Citizen
“A change is gonna come.” — Sam Cooke
Cowichan Valley schools superintendent Rod Allen told a group of about 40 parents and educators on Monday night that schools have to turn their methods upside down to get students where they’ll need to go in the future.
Children in school now will have about seven discrete careers in their lifetimes, so it’s no good preparing them for jobs that exist in the workplace today, he said, at a special session hosted by Ecole Mt. Prevost and the District Parent Advisory Committee.
“It’s no longer what you know but how do you apply it?” he said, warning parents against wanting their children to absorb a lot of facts because courses that follow that pattern are no longer useful.
“Take Science 10. Your kids are not learning science in Science 10. It’s become a Trivial Pursuit course with a Trivial Pursuit exam,” Allen said.
Part of the problem has been tests that require students to parrot what they’ve learned in instantly-outdated texts but, in recent years, every corner of society from universities to the world of work has started saying they need people who can use knowledge, can collaborate, and follow a project through, he said.
All sides of B.C.’s education field are working together to produce a new curriculum for all subjects. New provincial tests are also being developed, he said. In the Cowichan Valley school district, the open learning co-operative has been a provincial leader in showing how the new style works.
However, big changes mean teachers must be re-trained and, during a Q&A session after Allen’s talk, some parents at the meeting were concerned that students were missing instructional time this year because of it. Others asked about helping at-risk students, preparing students for university, and how classes will be graded.