Schoolyard Bullies: Messing with British Columbia's Education System

Jo-Anne Naslund is an education librarian at the University of British
Columbia Library.

In 1988, the Sullivan Royal Commission’s report, A Legacy for
Learners, recommended sweeping curricular changes for British
Columbia’s school system. Few believed that Bill

Vander Zalm’s Social Credit government would implement any of the 83
recommendations.

Under education minister Tony Brummet, however, all but two of the
recommendations were endorsed.

Mike Crawley, formerly the education reporter for the Kamloops Daily
News, chronicles the story of the Royal Commission and examines the
curriculum policy that became known as “Year 2000.” He also
describes the process and personalities involved in putting the policy
recom-

mendations into practice, and reveals what went wrong over a seven-year
period. According to Crawley, poor communication with school boards,
unions, parents, and businesses, was a problem. Changes in political
leadership and key personnel at the province’s Ministry of Education
failed to provide the policy with the support necessary. Administrators,
teachers, and parents experienced difficulties in making the transition
to such changes as integration, multiage grouping, and
criterion-referenced assessment. Opposition from the British Columbia
Teachers’ Federation, high-school teachers, universities, and
political conservatives, combined with mistakes made by program backers
and changes in the general political climate, eventually laid the Year
2000 proposals to rest, although many of the policy’s reforms continue
within individual schools and classrooms.

Crawley succeeds in identifying the bullies, but his analysis of why
the bullying occurred and how things could have been changed is limited.
His journalistic style results in a well-written and very readable
history of educational reform in British Columbia.