Dear fellow petitioners, I am writing to you to appeal for your help in making the government accountable to its people because the NDP gov't is not listening to us. Please help me understand the democratic process. I and my team had, on June 24th, 2015, submitted a paper petition against Inspiring Education with 3000 names. This is in addition to the nearly 18,000 online petitioners against the discovery math curriculum and 1800 online against Inspiring Ed. Yet, Minister Eggen and Premier Notley have chosen not to stop the harmful direction of education under the Inspiring Education initiative and discovery math curriculum. Please ask them why? Do they not care? Please make them care enough to stop funding the harmful education experiments on our children. How many more children must suffer the consequences of their inaction before they would listen? Recently the Calgary Herald reported that Minister Eggen said "there are elements of the Inspiring Education curriculum — which focus on critical thinking skills, rather than memory work — that he believes are “extremely valuable.” This one statement exemplifies how Minister Eggen has bought into the 21st century/inquiry-based learning where a dichotomy exist between critical thinking skills and memory work. This is exactly why the discovery math curriculum had ruined so many young lives when the multiplication table was taken out and students were made to find multiple ad hoc strategies to add 2+2. Minister Eggen is on the cusp of repeating a terrible history. Their one belief that memorization is at the expense of understanding or critical thinking is forming the basis of their ill-informed decisions in this "transformation" of our education system. In medicine, you would not tell patients not to exercise. So why would you persuade teachers to find strategies to divert our children from exercising their minds through memory work? Perhaps, until you get Alzheimer's, you may not appreciate how critical it is to maintain memory work in all aspects of learning. Moreover, why would Minister Eggen be addressing whether there's memory work in the curriculum? Shouldn't the ministry be responsible for only laying out WHAT needs to be learned, not HOW it's to be taught? Minister Eggen's statement sounds like an admission that, in fact, the ministry is aiming to dictate how teachers teach. Then it is true that the education ministry is still working to realize the PC's 2013 Ministerial Order that was written to enforce the vision of inquiry-based learning to comply with the 2009 Inspiring Education policy report, wherein acquiring knowledge is not considered important. The ministry would like you to believe that they are listening to us by promising to fund teacher training in mathematics. However, they're not disclosing the fact that the focus of that training is likely to teach teachers how to teach discovery math rather than the gold standard of practice, i.e. the standard algorithms or conventional methods of calculation. The ministry would like you to believe that they're working collaboratively with a couple of our mathematicians, but its all a facade. We won't believe that the ministry is doing anything substantial to help our children unless they sever all ties with the 2013 Ministerial Order to end their relationship with the Inspiring Education initiative. Severing ties with the 2013 Ministerial Order will be proof that they are not replacing our world class education system with the proven inferior inquiry-based system. Please ask Minister Eggen to keep his promise and arrange a meeting with me and my team in the near future for an actual discussion of our concerns. I believe that Minister Eggen would effect positive changes if he himself would listen fully to our concerns. And no, the brief encounter between Minister Eggen and I on June 24th was not a meeting. Kindest regards, Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies http://www.albertansforeducation.com/contact-your-mla/ https://www.facebook.com/Alberta-Math-Petition-715037091853017/timeline/ p.s. There is one of Minister Eggen's letters that is going around with the following message to appease and quiet us: "Dear Mr. C: Thank you for your August 13, 2015 email regarding your concerns about future curriculum development and Inspiring Education. As you may be aware, I had an opportunity to meet with Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies on June 25, 2015 and to listen to some of her concerns regarding Inspiring Education and the math curriculum. Additionally, in July, Dr. Tran-Davies met with Alberta Education officials to further discuss her concerns. I understand that Dr. Tran‑Davies was pleased to have met with staff and to have the opportunity for her delegation to share their concerns. As a result, the ministry will be consulting with some of her colleagues in the future. Through the Inspiring Education dialogues, Albertans identified the need to adapt our education system so that students could meet the challenges and embrace the opportunities of the 21st century. Inspiring Education provided a broad framework document that was developed to describe the overall direction, principles and long-term goals for education in Alberta. As we move forward in developing the future direction for education, we are balancing what we have learned from Inspiring Education with what we have heard from Albertans to determine what innovative ideas we can take forward. Inspiring Education is not curriculum teachers are teaching in the classroom right now. To date, no new curriculum – including programs of study – has been developed through Curriculum Redesign. In addition, none of the documents, initiatives or practices associated with Inspiring Education mandate one pedagogical approach over another. We are using feedback from Albertans, including your comments, along with the results of ministry staff’s review of the math program to further refine our Kindergarten to Grade 9 mathematics curriculum. This includes expanded professional learning opportunities for elementary teachers, identifying additional program support resources and reinforcing the basics through provincial assessment. Alberta Education will be consulting with Albertans in a variety of ways to support this approach. I appreciate you writing to share your concerns. Sincerely, David Eggen Minister" This is my take on the letter. A few points: 1. They are making it out that I really had a meeting with Eggen when it was a 15min encounter wherein I had to spew out all our concerns in one breath. I asked him to meet again so we can actually have a discussion and he verbally agreed, but he reneged on his promise. 2. True that I said positive things about the meeting with his staff, but should I have said negative things for him to take us seriously. 3. True they invited a couple of our mathematicians to be a part of their consultation. Do you think we should be complacent and assume that they will be listening to us? With respect to the math, the discovery math curriculum has already been in place since 2007. After the meeting with Johnson, we were able to get some changes to re-implement the times table, expect mastery of basic facts,etc. What we are still fighting for is for them to fully implement the standard algorithms as compulsory in the curriculum and that multiple strategies are not expected. The "curriculum redesign" is still in progress, and what we are fighting for is for them to not reduce content or devalue the importance of knowledge, as that is their intention if they were to follow Inspiring Ed's philosophy. In terms of dictating methods of teaching, it was written into the 2013 Ministerial Order, which was written by the same people (Johnson, Sharon Friesen), that learning is to be more discovery than dissemination of information. Those promoting Inspiring Ed has been pushing inquiry and denigrating the traditional methods. The Inspiring Ed schools are the ones with more project-based learning. So, yes indeed they are dictating methods. Inspiring Ed is not a curriculum because it is a philosophy of teaching methodology --- student centre, project base, personalized teaching, etc...and the curriculum that comes about under Inspiring Ed would allow for inquiry-based learning because of the reduced content, with greater focus on competency. Teachers who are experiencing Inspiring Education are telling me they're dictating how inquiry is better. So, what the ministry is saying is a lie. A teacher's response to the letter: "First of all, Inspiring Ed is being implemented right now! Currently, all of our locally based options at schools in Blackgold Regional Schools Division have been revamped to an individualized technology/entrepreneurial focused CTF format. This was mandated for implementation this year by Alberta Ed and we are following this ill-conceived schedule. Most schools are not doing it - likely because all the Alberta Ed. documentation available online is marked as "draft" only. Mandated to implement something in the "draft" stage only is ludicrous, but we're going ahead - poorly prepared I might add. Like many others, our district also has hired a number of "instructional coaches" who are being paid to work with teachers to create student-centered projects in core subject areas - including math - using discovery learning approaches and technology. This despite the mounting research that has been coming in (so quickly I can't keep up) against. such practices. It is now irrefutable neuroscience that writing by hand is markedly more effective for absorbing new information. The physical act of writing - not typing- activates both are brain's sensorimotor and language centres. Don't even get me started on screen reading and its metacognition and comprehension shortcomings. Private sector consultants, computer companies and those on the Google bandwagon are trying to convince us otherwise. I am not anti-technology. It has a place in the classroom for activities where speed, access, and connections with content or others is improved. Students should not be on devices all day or be learning "Minecraft" at school (I know of a school in our district that actually integrates this killing game at the elementary school level). There is enough time spent outside of school by students disconnecting from the real world. The education system should be saving our kids from the detrimental effects, not promoting them. We need to slow down and consider long-term consequences before changing what is not broken. If there was accountability for following the current curriculum, there would be no need for the euphemistic "re-design". And finally, the Inspiring Ed dialogue involving Albertans was of an extremely limited sample size. It is interested to note that the number of people involved in the "dialogue" asking for a curriculum re-haul is now FEWER THAN 10% of the number of actual Albertans who have signed petitions against it. Highly paid professional consultants, keynote speakers, maverick authors, and greedy corporations have been pushing world-wide for changes in education that practiced teachers know will not improve learning." And another teacher's response to his letter: "My response: They're employing the same language as the spin doctors that came before them. First: Inspiring Ed dialogues never really happened. Only a small cross-section of Albertans were "consulted" - a sample size and demographic that could not be considered remotely statistically significant. Second: By adhering to the "framework" of Inspiring Ed and by giving it any credence, redesign had already begun in Alberta classrooms - a redesign that has been wholeheartedly embraced by Alberta Ed. Just look at the grade three SLA situation and the reduction of diploma exam weightings to 30%. Third: As a teacher, I'm fully aware that pedagogical practice has not been officially dictated. However, schools and districts are paying good money - or, rather, siphoning it out of classrooms - to fund project-based and tech-based PD for teachers, to create consultant positions for things like the Flexibility Enhancement Project, and to take teachers out of the classroom in order to give them cushy non-teaching roles within schools to push various interpretations of Inspiring Ed. If Minister Eggen is unaware of all this and is simply passing the buck, shame on him. If he is aware, then Alberta Ed is surreptitiously pushing this agenda forward until one day it's simply reality and there will be no turning back. The continued use of language like "21st century," and "innovation" only reinforces the Ministry's goal to further obfuscate the real and valid concerns of 20 000 Albertans. How very disappointing."