This week in class, I found the idea interesting, and seeing how PSII does free inquiry is great, it still leaves me wondering how that works in a fully public school. In my class before his presentation, I had the opportunity to talk to a teacher at a local private school, who also follows an inquiry-based method, using a global International Baccalaureate (IB) program. https://www.ibo.org/, which is a more structured inquiry style, and still uses the traditional north American system with classes. The private school is a fully independent school with much higher tuition fees and an extremely monetarily privileged school community. These two examples of full systems based on inquiry both in the private systems really make me wonder how this could work in the public system, where the demographics and socio-economic situations will vary.
Equity in education is extremely important in my philosophy, and I have a dilemma with the private system because I feel the representation isn’t an accurate reflection of the people who are in the community and representation is a crucial part of learning.
I know Oak Bay is a public school, but the community is still financially very well off comparatively. When students come from economic backgrounds and live in wealthy neighbourhoods, privilege still exists. I have had the opportunity to take a class with a teacher from Oak Bay high school, and their financial availability within the families is remarkably different, compared to even what I experienced in a high school in district 61 that was also more well off than many schools in British Colombia. So while it will be very interesting to hear about how it runs at Oak Bay, it leads me to the question of can an inquiry-based system work at a school where the socioeconomic framework isn’t as ideal as the schools I have heard. I want it to work, but have unfortunately not seen an example.