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Could new land skills handbook be the death to cultural learning?

Former Nunavut Arctic College president says new guide being published by Department of Education will ruin land skills programs in schools
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Former Nunavut Arctic College president Mike Shouldice says the new land skills program handbook for Nunavut schools is totally unrealistic. Photo courtesy Mike Shouldice

To say the new land skills program handbook for Nunavut schools is a total dud in the eyes of a former educator would be a an understatement.

Mike Shouldice of Rankin Inlet said the new handbook on land skills and school trips will essentially end the land skills program.

The former president of Nunavut Arctic College said the expectations of the new handbook, approved by cabinet and scheduled to go to print in the coming month, are totally unrealistic.

In my opinion, this will essentially kill the land skills program and any cultural learning and content," he said. Who the heck wrote this, somebody in the federal government?

It is risk management within the Government of Nunavut and Education is pushing this. They're going to test it until June.

If, in August, the kids come back to school and you want to take them down to the Elder's Cabin area and pick some berries, for example, you have to apply and it's a huge application 160 days in advance.

So, if you want to go berry picking in late August or September, you have to pick a day and who knows what the weather's going to be and apply for permission, then, within so many weeks, they'll get back to you and say you may now plan your trip, which they then have to approve. That's crazy.

Shouldice said this is an example of excessive risk management and that the whole thing makes no sense.

There was a DEA (District Education Authority) meeting in Rankin (May 21) which was poorly attended. For me, it was a good information session because I got to ask who wrote this, who's supporting this and when did you receive it?

This just astounds me. If you want to take anybody caribou hunting and they go on a sled - you always had to have a limited number of students per hunters, but now they all have to wear equipment owned by the school, they all have to wear helmets imagine that in the winter - and they all have to have a licensed guide.

I've been involved with this for nearly 50 years. This was the kind of stuff we developed at the Inuit Cultural Institute in the mid-1970s for schools.

I'm OK with gone are the days of mom and dad and you pick the old guy in a sled, you pile on, go out, shoot some caribou, he shows you how to skin them and you come home safe, but the cages need to be rattled with whoever is pushing this one.

Shouldice said the rush to institute it right away and print it next month also makes absolutely no sense, in his opinion.

This is crazy. It's absolutely crazy. I can't find a word to describe how it makes me feel. I would have said colonialism, but, if it's our government that's pushing it, then that's an inappropriate term.

Onerous is a good word. I think it's going to discourage people from taking school trips. I think it will kill the land skills program. This is not the vision of Nunavut that we prepared, and had, where the curriculum reflected Inuit values and learning.

This is Nunavut. There has to be some common ground here where you can back off a little on this because of the context, the weather and the need for the learning.

I can't believe our Department of Education is trying to sell this one. I just can't believe this is somehow driven by a government that represents a territory that needs cultural learning in the school system.



About the Author: Darrell Greer, Local Journalism Initiative

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