Allannah:

The basic theory behind the education reform is to develop competency, apart from acquiring masses of information. So there are cross-curricular competencies, where students are supposed to be able to apply knowledge that they've learned from for example, geography. So you're supposed to be able to look at a geographical situation and to make reasoned judgments based on that. Then there are learning competencies, where you show the ability to manipulate information, to be self-critical, to look at a variety of sources for your research.

Essentially it's meant to create um, intense learners, people who have the capacity to learn outside the school system too. It's a terrific system for higher-order learners who have curiosity, who make those kinds of connections between subjects already; it's a great system for that. For kids that don't have a great body of acquired knowledge before they arrive at school it's a little iffier, because you're asking them to do two or three stages of learning all at once, and they haven't necessarily got the groundwork to do that.

One of the things that I thought was really fun was um, one of the tasks was to compare the garbage collection system in Montreal and Cairo - which would be a lot of fun if you had a clue where Cairo was. It's that type of thing that doesn't seem to translate into our particular environment. But it's a great idea on paper.

Miriam: How has James Lyng been coping with the demands of the reform? - Given that it is not necessarily ...

Allannah:

It's been very very difficult and very confusing for a lot of the teachers who are trying to get basic skills taught. And it was fine up until these standard evaluations. The theory is that you have two years, grade 7 and 8 to acquire all the um to master all the competencies of cycle 1. So in theory what you don't catch in the first year, you pick up in the second, in practice if you fall far enough behind in the first year, it's almost impossible to make it up in the second, and then you have these standardized evaluations at the end, so it's been very very stressful for the teachers.

Plus there are no materials, the textbooks haven't been translated yet, the uh, well essentially the textbooks haven't been translated, that's probably the biggest problem, so teachers are scrambling to find materials on the internet to work with projects. In some ways, it's a big opportunity for the community-learning centre because we can go out and find the resources in the community. In another sense it's a real handicap for the teachers, who are basically taught to instruct using instructional materials - it's been a challenge.

Miriam: So there's no way, schools don't set their own learning goals. Was there ever a point in Quebec where schools got to say okay well this is our student body here's what we think?

Allannah:

Yeah I think when we made our application for gerautrement phase 1 that was the idea, now it's called "New approaches, New solutions", it was an initiative on the part actually of the old pequiste government to adapt educational reform to particular types of schools. So they pumped all this money into schools in economically challenged areas, and said to them, basically; "Listen go and do what you think is best." So we had that very brief three years where they let us do what we thought was best, and I think we were doing quite well then.

Miriam: It sounds very similar to what the reform is?

Allannah:

It should have been, it should have been, but the freedom was lost. Instead of our saying that we wanted to study endangered species, we had a the reform saying that you have to study these particular types of systems in science, you have to talk about reproduction you have to talk about... Anyhow there were specific themes that had to be covered, whereas we were trying to take the theme and look for the applications that suited the environment and what our kids could ingest.

Mir: So in a way it...

Allannah: The reform sounds so great, and everything about is terrific - except for the evaluations.

Miriam: No no, I was gonna say it sounds a lot like Matt's sort of like, we're going to do a PSA 'cause it's a great way to learn, and then Crystal saying "well actually what we really wanted to do, and what we said last year, was a comedy" So it's kind of a, it's interesting even from the top this idea of choice becomes really...

Allannah:

Limited. But that's a function of institutions. As soon as you institutionalize anything, it's not quick enough to be adaptive anymore. It's a big old structure with lots of consultants and you know people writing programs and people coming in to sell materials and resources and it's just a big blob.