School curricula are useful for teaching students. In Alberta, they’re also useful for buying votes.
At least for Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party. In the run-up to the provincial election on May 29, the NDP has said it’ll create Filipino and Somali curricula for Albertan schools if elected. The Alberta NDP confirmed to me that these curricula would be full translations of the Alberta curriculum (rather than language courses) via spokeswoman Malissa Dunphy.
The idea would be to allow schools to teach a standardized Alberta curriculum in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, or Somali. Notley told a press conference last month that she would be open to expanding this to other languages too, like Yoruba, spoken in some western African countries.
