OP-ED: To save Alberta’s schools, teach students how to think critically
"The real crisis in Alberta’s education system is not material but philosophical. Headlines focus on budgets and class sizes, but what truly deserves attention is the purpose of education itself."
Author: Dotan Rousso
The Alberta government’s latest offer to teachers includes a 12 per cent wage increase over four years, the hiring of 3,000 new teachers, and a unified provincial salary grid to narrow regional pay gaps. It also promises smaller class sizes, aiming for an average of 22 students per K–3 class with gradual reductions in upper grades. These steps show the government recognizes the strain teachers face — inflation, growing enrolment, and overcrowded classrooms.
Yet the real crisis in Alberta’s education system is not material but philosophical. Headlines focus on budgets and class sizes, but what truly deserves attention is the purpose of education itself. Unless Alberta redefines what it means to educate, no number of new hires or pay raises will prepare the next generation for the world they are inheriting.
Education is the most powerful investment any province can make — it pays back in safer communities, stronger economies, and more innovation. OECD and PISA data show that systems combining excellence and equity — like Finland’s and Singapore’s — achieve higher civic literacy and long-term social cohesion. Those gains depend not only on resources but on the kind of minds we cultivate.
Pointing to Alberta’s strong PISA rankings is tempting, but those rankings hide a worrying decline. Analysis from the Alberta Parents’ Union shows our actual scores have been falling for two decades; we are simply “not dropping as quickly as the rest of the world.” Worse, the share of Alberta 15-year-olds lacking baseline math competency rose from 15.1 per cent in 2012 to 21.4 per cent in 2022. The system is not masking underperformance to protect self-esteem — it is creating it through systemic neglect. Our “material” problem is our “philosophical” one.
In classrooms across the province, the signs are visible: bright students hiding their potential behind indifference, teachers too exhausted to inspire, lessons cut short for lack of time. It isn’t cynicism — it’s quiet surrender. When a system stops believing in excellence, students stop believing in themselves.
What Alberta’s schools must now prioritize is not only what students learn but how they think. Education should move beyond rote learning and standardized comfort zones to cultivate analysis, curiosity, and courage. The goal is not compliant workers but critical citizens — people able to evaluate claims, detect bias, and see through manipulation. In an age of fake news, social-media echo chambers, and political propaganda, that literacy is essential.
We must also stop aiming for the comfortable middle. Too many classrooms seek to make everyone feel equally successful, even at the cost of excellence. Education should inspire and reward achievement, not lower expectations to preserve self-esteem. Students deserve both compassion and challenge. Excellence — in academics, arts, trades, and character — must again become a guiding value.
To reach that goal, Alberta needs a cultural shift that no budget can buy. Policymakers and teachers must nurture classrooms that value respectful disagreement and the “devil’s-advocate” mindset — questioning assumptions and testing ideas. Encouraging students to challenge prevailing narratives sharpens intellect and civic responsibility.
This transformation is urgent in an age of artificial intelligence, algorithmic bias, and synthetic media. With deepfakes and AI-driven propaganda multiplying, the only safeguard for democracy is an education system that teaches students how to think, not what to think.
The teachers’ strike, therefore, should not end merely with higher pay or smaller classes. It should ignite a deeper reckoning over purpose — a joint commitment by government and educators to elevate Alberta’s schools beyond maintenance and toward meaning. Only when the system aligns material support with intellectual ambition will Alberta truly invest in the future it claims to be fighting for — a future built not just on better classrooms, but on better minds.
For comments: dotanrousso@yahoo.com
Remember Critical thinking????
A most important skill which ceased to be taught pretty much everywhere quite a while ago not just in Alberta.
It's one that should be taught but is not and the reason is simple I think.
If one is trained to think critically one can more easily distinguish between facts, reality and BS and BS is what currently abounds from Woke BS, to DEI BS, to general BS which spews from the mouths of activists and politicians alike on a daily basis and which is amplified as fact by the MSM.
... An excellent argument to teach or not teach critical thinking depending on which side of the aforementioned equation one might be inclined to be on I suppose.
I guess it all depends on whether we want citizens who crave freedom and have the critical thinking skills to become productive individuals who push back against government overreach or a slave population that is easy to control. The Covid nonsense could have never captured 80+% of the country if individuals cared about freedom, individual rights, and could think for themselves. Remember mask on to walk to your seat in the restaurant and mask off once you were seated? The inane 6-feet apart garbage? Plexiglass? Those of us with critical thinking skills didn't buy in for a second.
Government has no interest in fostering critical thinking because it doesn't serve them to have a populace smart enough to demand less government. They are parasitic and it's much easier to feed off those who think more government is the answer to everything than to convince a critically thinking populace of their necessity. How else could the party who destroyed the country be re-elected? What we need is competition in the provision of education but that doesn't feed the government beast.