The Sanitized Curriculum

In essence the following quote hits home with me the most when I reflect on this article:

"The focus is on empowering minority students, a process that can be accomplished by educators who are themselves empowered; in other words, who are secure in their own personal and professional identity and confident they have the ability and administrative support to help students succeed academically. Empowerment is a reciprocal process between educators and students that cannot take place in the closed hieracrchically controlled bureaucracy promoted by current reform efforts."

When I examine the notion of literacy, I often connect it to being a critical thinker. The ability to deconstruct, to examine, to explore, to identify, to make fit, to add one's own take on an issue. It is something that develops over time and it is a skill that can be taught but must be experienced also. It is a skill that also is expressed in each student in different ways and can be illustrated in various ways.

What I find frustrating at times is how something like literacy and therefore critical thinking which should be addressed in the classroom, is being pre-packaged for teachers. This notion of Sanitizing the curriculum. Where the individuality of a teacher is being stripped away and things are being taught in an assembly line format - a carbon copy or cookie cutter formula.

That no matter where the teacher maybe in the city, or who the students are, they must be taught this way to be literate and therefore critical thinkers. Teachers have lost the ability to look at their students, see the make-up of who they are and then engage them so they become more literate or appreciate the power that comes from being literate.

By adhering to these formal methods of TLCs, OFIP practices, teachers become increasingly disheartened and frustrated because the individuality of teachers and students has been removed and teachers are not free to express themselves through their teaching and students are churning/cranking out the appropriate response.

Students will make the connections, infer from text or understand completely how the text features will help them to decipher text. But are they thinking critically. Are they experiencing their environment and interacting within it to gain a deeper understanding and then in turn become more literate.

Our mandate is to teach literacy, to teach critical thinkers, and there is some good in having standards and having some common goal to reach. To suggest that each student will get there this way or that every teacher must teach it this way, is to remove the teacher's ability to be literate and think critically.

Teaching the Behaviour program is where I saw the failings of this top-down model; TLC approach with targets and moderated marking. I needed to understand my students and work within their setting, understand what they wanted to learn about and be exposed to. We were able to get through some interesting reads that they experienced in their daily lives. Yes we did make connections and infer but in a way that we all agreed on (sub-consciously for them), to get there. It was not the OFIP way but we made to the end and we were better for it.