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An 'out-of-the-box' plan?

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere else." - Albert Einstein Clare would do a great deal better in school if she simply controlled her imagination," my Grade 5 school report card told my parents.
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"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere else."

- Albert Einstein

Clare would do a great deal better in school if she simply controlled her imagination," my Grade 5 school report card told my parents.

I was actually a pretty good student but I remember thinking, "boy, was I going to be in trouble when my parents read that!"

What happened at the time seemed worse to me than any scolding I might have received.

My mother actually made an appointment to go see the headmistress of my school. I was mortified. I skulked the school hallways for days beforehand.

My mom was a "trouble-maker" — this just had to end badly. I was probably going to be singled out for "help."

What actually happened was that my mother went in and "respectfully" told the headmistress and the teacher what she thought of the comment — and it wasn't good.

"Imagination is the only thing that matters in the long-run," my mother told me later. Without it she said there can be no problem solving, no creativity.

And she wasn't talking about answering math drills as problem solving — she was talking about real life. Reaching goals takes a lot of creativity I've learned.

I was reminded of this childhood memory recently as an ad in Pique, "Building Our Exceptional School District Together," caught my eye. As we have been hearing for over a year now the BC Ministry of Education is working on a new Education Plan — one for 21st century learners.

The ad tells us about a way for everyone to become involved by sharing their ideas and input through a website www.sd48learns.org.

As I watched the videos on the education ministry website I found myself getting quite excited by the approach being adopted in this new plan. It is far-reaching and thought provoking.

"We will focus on student-centred learning, ensuring the needs, strengths and interests of each student is a priority," states the ministry website in its explanation of the plan. "Students will play a larger role in their education. Teachers will work collaboratively with students and their families. We will see greater flexibility in how a school operates. And, we will use technology as a key tool for students. (We) want to introduce personalized learning... where the needs of the student are put first."

The key competencies being strived for in the plan are: collaboration, creativity, social responsibility, healthy living, global and cultural understanding, communication, innovation, critical thinking and problem solving.

I've been observing some of this in the elementary schools here for years. My son and daughter have grown up understanding that there may be one correct answer in math but there are half a dozen ways to find it. They understand the idea of "inquiry." They understand that if they are bored in class they are not learning — that doesn't mean they are troublemakers or there is something wrong with them — it means the learning environment for that student needs to change.

They get that.

The plan calls for reading, writing and math to be a core focus in the early years, in the middle years learning is all about inquiry and completing project-based learning, and the senior years are about engaging a student's interests and getting them ready to transition to the workplace or post-secondary learning.

"While a solid knowledge base in the basic skills will be maintained, to better prepare students for the future there will be more emphasis on key competencies like self-reliance, critical thinking, inquiry, creativity, problem solving, innovation, teamwork and collaboration, cross-cultural understanding, and technological literacy," states the plan.

While the teachers through the BC Teachers Federation were not consulted on the plan due to the job action it appears to dovetail with the core values the union professes.

But the union's website, which carries essays and papers on the ideas behind the plan, asks some hard questions too. Ones we all need to think about.

For example, how is the technology component of this plan going to be implemented? There isn't enough money for the education system now. A recent story on the plan in the Tyee tells us that students at John Oliver Secondary in Vancouver each had to pay $1,000 to be part of the Digital Immersion program.

In one essay on the BCTF site, "British Columbia's neoliberal folly: Dissecting the 21st-century agenda," Tobey Steeves tells us the 21st-century agenda grew out of the U.K's Education 2000, which basically looked at dividing the education system into two tiers — those who were academically gifted and those who would, in essence, become the labour pool.

You can't get away from the fact that the employment situation today is completely different than it was 100 years ago and yet the education system has not kept pace as far as addressing this goes.

But there are huge practical problems as well as we embrace the plan: where is the funding to come from, some teachers are not cut out for this type of teaching (what happens when your child gets one of them), some students don't work well in groups, so one student ends up having to do all the work, boys learn differently than girls, surely you can't discuss concepts critically until you know the facts behind them, school work can be difficult and if we leave kids to only learn what they want to will their education be compromised, where is a teacher to find time to help create personalized learning plans for every student?

The Education Plan is exciting and I want what it promises for every child. The question is: can it be delivered in an education system fraught with political behaviour?