Technolandy

Day 8 (of 2024/25) what should be added to education (according to Ontario) but what should be dropped?

Ontario is asking parents what they feel ought to be part of students learning in schools regarding practical life skills. https://www.ontario.ca/form/survey-equipping-students-practical-life-skills

And some of the ideas are great… and things I have taught my kids both at home and at school… but not all… And I’ll explain why as we think about what could be not taught at school to create time (and resources) to add things in! It’s a very good activity to review what we do!

First aid and emergency preparedness: sure – to a basic degree, everyone ought to share and know some quick treatments – bandaids, ice, aloe vera plants, but after that – you’d want one of the courses that leads to a specific certificate. 

Food preparation (for example, chopping food, safely cooking meat); again good (assuming an opt out of meat cooking for some) but … most schools do not have a cafeteria setup that would enable this to be a universal setup – also, how will it reflect different cultural and religious observations without being exclusionary?

Making informed decisions about health and nutrition (for example, sleep needs, getting key nutrients) I think that this is pretty regularly done through classroom discussions and all-ish ages – the value of rest and sleep and making sure you fuel your body (not a good example as I missed lunch today… don’t tell my wife!)

Nutritious meal planning (for example, understanding food labels, planning balanced meals and snacks) This is a good theoretical activity – especially looking and understanding what the sodium and sugar contents mean… but kinda like teaching social media with phones banned… will the theoretical transfer over to practical application? (Aka will kids still eat raw ramen despite the salt content!?) and what about cultural components and allergy awareness pieces. What is ‘nutritious’ is sadly not universal.

Bicycle maintenance and repair (for example fixing a flat tire, oiling bicycle chains)  assuming that students own bikes… or can the government provide one to all children <— that would promote healthy activities and possibly reduce road congestion to and from school and home…

Car maintenance and repair (for example, changing a tire, topping up fluids in a car, changing windshield wiper blades) assumes that everyone will want to own a car – my own household has 2/3 of the next generation not really yearning for the option of driving down the open road… I don’t get it, but public transit is getting better in more and more communities (just sometimes challenging getting to different rural communities in my opinion…!)

Home maintenance and repair (for example, using cleaning products, fixing a leaky tap, replacing caulking, using wall anchors in dry wall) or… “call the landlord” – again, my next generation does not see being a home owner in their near/middle futures… so why emphasize something that may be decades away after an inheritance?

Effective and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools – good way to bring the most powerful tool to disrupt education into use in a mindful manner! AI has so many great applications – from prompting work, to editing work, to enhancing ideas… 

Effective use of frequently used computer applications (for example, email, spreadsheet, word processing) always good to slow down and pause and make sure everyone knows how to copy&paste and organize files – even at my online learning school, some staff have noticed that we have rushed a couple things and not organized them very well… shouldn’t have Untitled 38 popping up when you open a new document

Managing scheduled priorities and obligations (for example, using a physical or digital planner, prioritizing tasks) physical planner? Use to love them, but they were never with me when I needed to make an adjustment… an area Microsoft, Apple and Google have all done very well with – wish they could all synch a bit better all together… no I don’t…

So, as I ask in the title… if we are wanting to add materials to the curriculum and ‘must learns’ – what are the elements that we can drop off of pretty full schedules and class lists? The challenge is that for many students and teachers, what is ‘most important and untouchable’ isn’t the same list (refer to Mr Hollands Opus). What could be dropped from K-12 and added to university (just had a chat about how Paul Lockhart showed me that Arithmetic could easily by itself be studied on its own throughout k-12) Curious about what the list is for consideration of what to drop is in BC? It’s a tough choice, because the curriculum is very rich: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca