Curriculum a shambles pt1.

The so-called Common Curriculum approach to education has been spreading throughout North America for some half dozen years. In Canada it has been promoted most diligently in Ontario, where the Department of Education under NDP guidance issued outlines in 1992 and a "Working Document" in 1993. A broad outline and critique appeared in our pages in March 1994--Kathline Nitsch, "Ontario's Common Curriculum: whose values?" After years of presumably value-free education, she pointed out, the CC will introduce value-laden education.

A 1995 updated version of the CC has now appeared. Because of its importance for all of Canada, Catholic Insight brings the first of three articles on the CC in this issue. In Part I Catholic Insight's Associate Editor Dr. John Shea discusses the question of "values".

In 1995 the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training produced a document called the Common Curriculum: Policies and Outcomes, Grades 1-9, 1995. This curriculum is to be implemented by the development of many "politically correct" policies which are singled out for special emphasis. I shall not discuss them here, but limit myself to the proposed values which the Ministry states that students should adhere to by the end of Grade 9. The word "values" is defined as beliefs that guide behaviour and give meaning and purpose to life. The curriculum, the authors state, cannot be neutral about them, insisting that the outcomes (the "high but realistic expectation of achievement for Ontario students"), will in fact affirm and act as the values the students acquire.

The making of values

Values are described as being influenced by personal, religious, and ethical beliefs, as well as by culture, tradition, the classroom and school environments, language and family background. There is an implicit assumption that moral values are subjective.

Not only that, but they may have to be subjected to "constructive" change, in which what is deemed "valuable" in our curently established beliefs and practices is preserved. This places morality in the same category as empirical science, fashion and technology! "Integrated learning" is recommended in all programs so that the pupils will make the "connections" between ideas, persons and things that the Ministry intends them to make.

The individual ethic

The authors do not recognize moral values as objective reality. Since there is no reference to the objective truth of what is good and what is evil, the entire curriculum is imprecise, incomplete and misleading. This could well lead to a crisis of truth. Pope John Paul II speaks of this crisis as follows:

"Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgement about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individual ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others." (1)

In a Catholic school system, values education should be based on the "rational--and thus universally acceptable and communicable--character of moral norms belonging to the sphere of natural moral law." (2) The school system should also "reaffirm the interior character of the ethical requirements deriving from that law, requirements which create an obligation for the will only because such an obligation was previously acknowledged by human reason and, concretely, by personal conscience." (3) (These too are the Holy Father's words.)

Catholic schools should also teach the truth that human reason depends on Divine reason and therefore on Divine revelation. Our reason is not completely sovereign in deciding on the right ordering of life in this world. As the Pope's encyclical The Splendour of Truth says, "The natural moral law has God as its author, and man . . . by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which is not for him to establish." (4) If the moral truth were not objective and attainable, there would be no such truth at all, and no reason why moral values should be either taught or learned.

Change and consensus

The C.C. document emphasized change almost as if it were a value in itself. It makes no attempt to differentiate between changes which are morally good and those which are morally bad. Chesterton tells us that the deepest rut a man can get into is change! This is to say that we lose our sense of moral direction and become imprisoned in a labyrinth of arbitrary change from which there is no escape.

The only way in which values are judged in the curriculum is by popular consensus, which inevitably changes over time, as, for example, in regard to the morality of abortion. But the moral truth of things does not change. It cannot! Otherwise, we have no moral truth, and no measure to judge what is proposed as being true or false.

On July 4, 1994, Vaclav Havel, the Czech President, was presented with the Philadelphia Liberty Medal. In his subsequent address he said, "The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it."

Somebody will decide what is "truth"

Since society will not tolerate chaos, people will not be allowed to behave in an entirely arbitrary fashion, following their own moral principles. So values will be based either on objective morality or on some form of consensus, whether or not this is morally right.

This could open the way for manipulation of the popular will through media control, in the direction of totalitarianism--not necessarily of a tyrannical character, but more likely a subtle, pervasive force persuading the public to accept the edicts of the authorities. The power of the state would be in the hands of an elite class, and resistance to it would be regarded as opposing the will of the majority. Such a moral outlook would not respect the freedom of the person, the source of that person's dignity. True freedom allows us to do what is objectively good, not what is deemed good by majority vote.

The philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand has written that "Man's essential transcendence consists in the twofold conformation of mind and will to objective reality, in his knowledge of truth, and in his free obedience to the call of morally relevant values--ultimately, to the call of God." (5)

The challenge

The Common Curriculum may create either a hazard, or provide an opportunity for growth, for Catholic schools. Which it will do depends first on how the schools interpret the nonspecific language the curriculum uses when discussing morality, and secondly, on how they react to it.

The expected outcomes of the curiculum are expressed in imprecise and ambiguous language. An education in moral values based on Catholic Church teaching and philosophy would probably have a very different content from one based on the ideas that "most Canadians consider essential to the well-being of society."

Just how ambiguous this language is may be appreciated by considering the following.

The outcomes include:

* to understand the role of ethics in business, labour, and government;

* to understand the ways in which culture affects ideas and behaviour;

* to understand the nature of family relationships and recognzie that there are different kinds of families;

* to begin to understand the physical, social, emotional and spiritual aspects of sexuality;

* to understand diversity;

* to understand information and issues related to contraception, AIDS, and sexually transmitted disease;

* to understand that different disciplines may offer different explanations (for example, religion and psychology may explain certain behaviours differently);

* to be able to describe different models used to explain the world (for example, scientific, religious, and mythological models). (6)

It can readily be seen that many of these are not in harmony with Catholic teaching at all.

One final note. It is well and good to hold many values in common with the public school system. The connections between these commonly held values and the various different subjects of the curriculum will also be shared by the Catholic and public school system. We share, for example, our love of learning and our belief in honesty and social responsibility.

However, there are areas in which Catholic religion and values directly contradict the popular public view of things, e.g., the definition, role and value of the family and the morality of abortion and contraception. In all such matters in which there is a contradiction between our beliefs and those of the public school system, we must have the courage to make our pupils aware of that contradiction and of the reasons why it exists. Of course this must be done in a prudent and charitable manner and without any unjust treatment of those who disagree with us.

Because we believe our values (which are based on Catholic Church teaching and Catholic philosophy) have objective merit, we must not simply develop "additional outcomes" in our "own program in religious education" as is suggested that we do by the Common Curriculum, 1995. When we differ, we should respectfully differ and not merely add our values to a pre-supplied list of public ones. Our values are not merely opinions.

The challenge for Catholic schools is clear. If they choose to opt out entirely from the program of values that "most Canadian consider essential" (7) and instead teach principles based on Catholic Church teaching and Catholic philosophy, then the Common Curriculum may prove an opportunity for them to produce an outstanding curriculum.

(1) Veritatis splendor, 32.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Dietrich von Hildebrand, Trojan Horse in the City of God, Sophia Institute Press, 1993, p. 139.

(6) The Common Curriculum, Grades 1-9. Working document, 1993.

(7) Ibid.