Article content

Alberta has a quality education system, but slipping scores on provincial and international standardized math tests have become a growing concern.

Education Minister David Eggen recently tinkered with the curriculum to require students to memorize basic sums, and he added sections to the Grade 6 and 9 provincial exams that prohibit the use of a calculator.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Editorial: Math curriculum improvements really add up Back to video

These were important measures, but there’s more good news. Alberta is rewriting its entire kindergarten to Grade 12 school curriculum for the first time. A look at the proposed math expectations for younger pupils reveals that students will be asked to memorize more of their times tables earlier on, be able to count higher and master basic fractions in Grade 1.

There will also be more emphasis on working with money, time and calendars.

These are tremendously important elements of a basic education that are too easily overlooked in today’s digital age. There are an increasing number of anecdotal reports of students who can’t tell the time by looking at a traditional clock and who have a poor grasp of the days of the week and months of the year.