Curriculum Connections?

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with one of my colleagues.  We were discussing the grade 3 & 4 Social Studies Curriculum in NB.  I teach the English to FI Grades 3 -5.  I had a conversation that day with a grade 4 student who didn't seem to understand what a Prime Minister was.  Having taught the grade 3 curriculum I knew that Prime Minister would have been covered in levels of government in grade 3 social studies.  I did figure out eventually that the word she was looking for was 'mayor' (which also would have been covered in grade 3).  My colleague and I wasn't surprised that this student couldn't recall the word 'mayor' because she remembers when the social studies curriculum was changed a few years back.  She was at the introductory meeting.  She remembers that there was a re-thinking of outcomes and that grade 3 would focus on "My Province" and grade 4 would focus on "Explorations" (expanding across Canada).  She asked the question to the advisor where "my city" would be taught.  The answer she was given was, "in grade 2".  She asked for clarification because the k-2 curriculum is not Social Studies, it's You & Your World, a combination of Social Studies, Science and Health.  The last Social Studies bit that is focused on is "community" which is not the same as "my city".  The advisor had no answer for her.  So what ended up happening is that the children make a jump in their realm of knowledge from "Community" to "My Province" and really don't get that orientation into "My City".

What bothered me the most upon hearing that was the seeming disregard of the curriculum that is already in place that sets up a student for success in grade 3.  The advisor who is giving inservice to implement a new curriculum had no idea that there is no such thing as grade 2 social studies in NB, nevermind the knowledge of what Social Studies type outcomes would have been addressed in the You & Your World Curriculum.  It makes no sense! How does this happen?  If we are supposed to keep building upon a child's foundational knowledge with the curriculum that we present, how can their previous common knowledge and experiences be ignored?  Why are we missing this step?  

It is so frustrating!  It makes me wonder what other areas in the curriculum get re-shuffled and re-aligned and in the midst of the process key pieces of foundational information get dropped.  From what I have read from our discussion boards I this probably exists elsewhere along the continuum, in other curricular areas and grade levels.

What I can take from this conversation, now that I have had a day or so to reflect, is the knowledge that perhaps I can do something about it.  Maybe not today, but continuing to work on this degree and build my own knowledge base in the area of curriuclum will allow me to be someone who could dialogue about these issue and help to bring about change.  One thing that I have picked up in our readings is how spotty a discipline curriculum studies is.  There appears to be a lot of disagreement in a lot of areas, from the definition of the word "curriculum" to what best practices and models of curriculum there are to follow.  There aren't as many people out there as I thought who have trained in curriculum and are really qualified to make decisions in matters of curriculum.  Taking this level of study and interacting with other teachers across the country gives me hope that perhaps in the future these inconsistencies in curriculum would be corrected.