“Incoherent” strike-era lessons draw fire from education expert

An education expert has sharply criticized the Alberta government’s online “tool kit” designed for students schooling at home during the provincewide teachers’ strike, calling it “incoherent” and poorly aligned with the official curriculum.
Maren Aukerman, an education professor at the University of Calgary, described the nearly 200-page resource as erratic, constantly leaping between topics with no clear continuity. She flagged glaring inconsistencies: Grade 1 learners being asked to multiply, Grade 3 students counting U.S. currency instead of Canadian, and Grade 4 classes tackling triangle drawing—work more suited for the earliest grades. “There are layers upon layers of problems with it … nothing makes sense,” she told reporters. “It is incoherent.”
The controversy arises amid Alberta’s largest ever teacher walkout. Some 51,000 teachers across 2,500 schools walked off the job on October 6, prompting the provincial government to lock them out days later. The disruption affects more than 740,000 students across Alberta.
The province says the web-based lessons spanning math, literacy, history and social studies over two-week cycles are intended to support parents while classes are suspended. Each module includes external links to sites such as Khan Academy, the BBC, United Nations, the Canadian Encyclopedia and even Ontario’s TVO Learn. Aukerman said the linkage appears random and distracts from coherent instruction.
She also highlighted the daily topic shifts—for instance, students might go from ancient Egypt to Greek history from one day to the next. In one Grade 6 social studies week, lessons cover plagiarism, decision-making, alcohol’s effects on the brain, and provincial government, without clear logic. Some assessment tasks require knowledge not introduced in preceding lessons.
Other criticisms include asking students to hold group discussions despite being isolated at home, and a high school poem using a derogatory word for Inuit people without context or explanation.
Aukerman, whose own child is in Grade 10, said she and many other parents refuse to use the tool kit. But she warns that uneven exposure to concepts may complicate teachers’ jobs once students return. “I honestly don’t think [the government tool kit] is better than nothing.”
In response, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides defended the materials, saying they were developed to allow students to “pick up where they left off.” He added that while classrooms proceed at different paces, the content is aligned with expected learning outcomes for this time of year.