School District 57 Aboriginal education board chair Marlene Erickson is a wholehearted subscriber to the idea that there are different styles of learning, some of which may not be so conducive to getting a classroom-style education.
"I'm not an expert but the idea is of being global thinkers, where our kids look at the big picture first and then break it down into the smaller details," Erickson said.
"I know from my own learning experience, I was failing math until I started reading from the back to the front.
"The end of the chapter is supposed to give you the big picture and where you're supposed to be going and then to understand what all those little pieces are."
She may be onto something.
"We can't make generalizations but a lot of our students are visual, spatial kinds of learners," said Aboriginal Choice School principal Kathy Richardson. "They see pictures and art and they express themselves really well that way, so we need to give them a lot more opportunities for them to represent their knowledge that way."
Erickson's and Richardson's assertions would probably receive support from Howard Gardener, a developmental psychologist at Harvard University and regarded as the father of multiple intelligences theory.
Gardener maintains there is more to learning than reading, writing and arithmetic but those three tend to dominate a traditional western education. He contends there are several other types of "intelligences" that can be scarcely developed in a typical school setting.
One of the most highly valued types of intelligences in preliterate societies is the ability to retain information, part and parcel of the oral tradition.
"While the emphasis on traditional cultures falls very much on oral language, rhetoric and word play, our culture places relatively greater emphasis on the written word - on securing information from reading and expressing oneself properly through the written word."
It was a theme Rheanna Robinson picked up on when she wrote a thesis on Aboriginal Choice Schools as part of earning a masters in First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia.
"Even within our contemporary Aboriginal communities, the oral tradition remains the one considered with the highest regard and is fundamental to the value system of the people," wrote Robinson, who is now a doctoral student in the educational studies department. "Due to the fact that a more literate form of linguistic intelligence is valued by our contemporary school system, the oral strength of Aboriginal societies becomes marginalized."
On the struggles Aboriginal students have with Gardner's "logical mathematical intelligences," scholars Robinson researched argue integrating traditional Aboriginal knowledge related to science would ease the struggle.
