Nova Scotia changing school curriculum - CBC News

There has been a lot of controversy revolving around education cuts in Nova Scotia, talks of teaching jobs being cut, schools being closed and the number of teaching aids being drastically reduced. With these budget cuts on the horizon it is hard to imagine that the Nova Scotia government has approved 6.7 million dollars to be spent on reviewing and changing the current curriculum, yet that is exactly what has happened. CBC news reports
that with the changing demand for types of workers in the job force, the Nova Scotia School Board feels that it is time to reevaluate the current curriculum and gear it more towards the labour industries and preparing youth for the 25+ years of work that will be provided by the Halifax Shipyards recent contract. The plan for changing the curriculum involves adding more programs to introduce students to trade work and getting teachers working more closely in the fields they are qualified in. They plan to increase the number of students who enter into trade work by getting them into the programs as soon as possible.

The main issue raised in the article is that of funding. This has been a concern with the school board for quite some time and this is just another obstacle to overcome.  Conservative leader Jamie Ballie calls for administration costs to be cut in order to fund such a transition, suggesting enough money has been taken out of the schools and it is time to take money from administration to put back into the classroom.            

Different types of ethnography allows for a more diverse type of learning, which in turn can lead to a higher success rate of students passing their classes and graduating on time. Much like the “Snakes and Ladders” performed ethnography it will appeal to a wider range of students, who do not excel as well in an academic setting. Allowing students to begin their career training while they are still in high school should cut down on program waiting lists after graduation and get more workers into the work force faster. As critical pedagogy is the practice of preparing students to thing for them and problem solve, this is exactly where the curriculum seems to be headed. Making the change from a curriculum program that resembles Freire’s banking method to one that more resembles the problem posing method can only be beneficial to the province’s labour sector. The only issue I can see with this is while the province cuts the rest of the education budget and increases the budget for trade programs, the more academic focus has potential to be left behind and suffer. With a refocusing of the curriculum those students who do not excel in the labour-based industry may find themselves at a loss just as it was in the opposite before.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/02/03/ns-schools-education.html