Back to the IN CASE YOU MISSED IT index
An Interdisciplinary Tift
This is part of an exchange between a well-known middle grades reform advocate
and a well-known evangelist
for integrated, real-world-oriented teaching. It's followed by some comments
about interdisciplinary teaching from Louisville, KY teacher Susan Ray.
We've grafted her comments onto the original exchange.
ADVOCATE: "Interdisciplinary teaching"-- the
great totem of middle level education, the ideal that is almost never implemented
well, the curricular black hole sucking in the focus and energy of thousands
of teachers, the practice that has not demonstrated that it fosters student
understanding or achievement--gets more attention than it deserves and student
learning and performance suffer as a result. Sorry, you pushed my button!
EVANGELIST: Is it wise to throw out a solid idea because
it's initially implemented poorly? What's your reaction to the following
observation about the general education curriculum?
"There is no longer any principle that unifies the school curriculum
and furnishes it with meaning . . ." -- Neil Postman
"It is a well-known scandal that our whole educational system is geared
more to categorizing and analyzing patches of knowledge than to threading
them together." -- Harlan Cleveland
"The division into subjects and periods encourages a segmented rather
than an integrated view of knowledge. Consequently, what students are asked
to relate to in schooling becomes increasingly artificial, cut off from
the human experiences subject matter is supposed to reflect." -- John
I. Goodlad
"To dump on students the task of finding coherence in their education
is indefensible. Colleges shouldn't be allowed to collect tuition on that
basis." -- Jonathan Smith
"The traditional, separate-subject curricula at the high school level
is typically not based on professional or lay consensus on the question
of what knowledge is of most worth." -- Gordon Cawelti
"The curriculum is like a bazaar, and students like tourists looking
for cheap bargains." -- Frederick Rudolph
"We have lost sight of our responsibility for synthesizing learning."
-- Robert Stevens
"Students rarely have an opportunity to discover what one set of ideas
has to do with another." -- Philip Sabaratta
"Our educational systems . . .are now primarily designed to teach people
specialized knowledge -- to enable students to divide and dissect knowledge.
At the heart of this pattern of teaching is a . . . view of the world that
is quite simply false." -- James C. Comer
ADVOCATE: Trying to be against interdisciplinary teaching
is like being against the flag, I guess. My beef is that it is incessantly
talked about and tried but I don't see much evidence that it helps kids
learn the skills they need, particularly the kids who need them the most.
It just impresses me as "a good idea" that is so complicated to
implement well that most teachers just aren't up to it, or skill development
gets lost in the process of "doing" the lesson.
MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH TEACHER (Susan Ray): I am responsible
for teaching mathematics to 115 8th graders. I work very hard to align my
teaching with both the recommendations of the National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Middle School Association (NMSA).
I believe that interdisciplinary instruction can work but that it takes
a great deal of effort to do well.
Four years ago, I became very frustrated. Each time integrated/thematic
instruction came up, there was generally at least one non-math content teacher
who tried to bring in math through statistics. It seemed like every time
a new idea came up, the statistics thing came up again...
Keeping statistics of Civil War battles... Keeping statistics on pollution...
Keeping statistics on the number of times a person did so and so... Keeping
statistics etc... On and on with the statistics.
I include a six-weeks unit on statistics each year because I believe that
a good understanding of statistics helps kids grow up to be more informed
adults. Papers and magazined are full of statistics yet there is more to
math than just statistics.
Right now, we are looking at algebraic ideas... The kids have discovered
the linear relationship between cellular phone bills (base rate plus so
much per minute becomes a formula for slope). This is also real-world but
I don't see it in the Civil War unit. Doesn't mean that it isn't valuable...
just doesn't work.
Not all content taught in each subject works in each and every interdisciplinary/thematic
unit and this isn't being said with a negative tone to my voice. I just
know that there are probably things that are important to be taught that
might not fit into a unit and there is nothing wrong with this. Connections
are what is most important and sometimes the connections come from within
a particular content area; in other words, connecting what is being taught
now with prior learning of something that seemed to be totally different
such as probability and Pascal's triangle. Forgive the constant use of math
examples...I'm trying to stick to something that I know well.
I guess that I'm just trying to share my own experience. Perhaps the next
time a team meets to discuss ways to integrate the curriculum, I'd suggest
that the word "statistics" not come up...(just a joke).
Research shows that many math teachers believe that other teachers just
don't understand that "math" is different than all the other subjects.
Sure it is... and so are all the other subjects. We are not "unique"
in that sense.
I'd love to work with interdisciplinary/thematic instruction. I think though
that early planning in the year is critical. That way, I can still teach
the slope of a line using a real world connection without feeling guilty.
##
- --
Marion Brady
<mbrady@digital.net>
<http://ddi.digital.net/~mbrady/index.htm>
4285 N. Indian River Drive
Cocoa, FL 32927