Is "interdisciplinary" better?
The Limits of Thematic Instruction
From Common Knowledge, Volume 7, No. 4, Fall 1994 © 1994 by the Core Knowledge Foundation. Not to be copied or reproduced without permission from the Core Knowledge Foundation, 801 E. High Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902.
Everybody's Connecting ...
You hear about it everywhere — in workshops, seminars, educational journals. The it is "interdisciplinary" or "thematic" instruction, the main idea of which can be summed up in a single imperative: Connect! It sometimes seems that everywhere, everybody's connecting. Connecting math to science. History to literature. Math and science to history and literature. And to the arts and geography. And why not to physical education too?
In some ways, this rush to connect the disciplines is a welcome change. It can provide helpful reinforcement: the more often a student encounters an important idea or concept, the more likely he or she is to grasp it. A high school curriculum that has students studying Ancient History while reading American Literature is missing the opportunity for some valuable interdisciplinary reinforcement. It makes sense, for example, when reading Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, to be studying not the Code of Hammurabi but the history of Puritanism in America, as well the Transcendentalist movement.
... but Not Everything Needs to Be Connected
Interdisciplinary instruction, carefully thought-out and judiciously applied, can help students make important connections. Contrary to some current thinking, however, not everything needs to be connected. It's not only acceptable, but sometimes preferable, to stay within the traditional disciplinary boundaries. It's fine, for example, for a fifth-grade class to devote a specific block of time daily to reading, discussing, and writing about Tom Sawyer. The book runs the risk of being swallowed if placed in a twelve-week interdisciplinary extravaganza during which students compute the area of board fence that Tom hoodwinked his friends into whitewashing; create geographic relief maps of Hannibal, Missouri; study the formation of stalagmites and stalactites (remember Tom and Becky in the cave?); or dress up in overalls and straw hats for "Tom Sawyer Days."
According to Professor Susan Drake (in Planning Integrated Curriculum, ASCD, 1993), "It only makes sense to teach through connections." Well, yes, unless the connections don't make sense. There's a tendency in some thematic instruction to push connections beyond the logical and natural into the realm of the strained and artificial. At this point, one is connecting not for the sake of academic reinforcement, but merely for the sake of connecting. Connections that aren't so much intellectually compelling as cute or clever can transform the classroom from a place of learning into a theme park.
Consider, for example, this class described by Professor Kathleen Roth (in an excellent article, "Second Thoughts About Interdisciplinary Studies," in the Spring 1994 issue of American Educator). The class is a lower elementary grade focusing on "the theme of teddy bears."
The children read stories about teddy bears, everything they did in writing class was written on paper cut in the shape of a teddy bear, they wrote their own teddy bear stories, brought in teddy bears from home, did math problems with "Gummy Bear" candy, explored different kinds of "real" bears in science, and on and on.
One stands amazed at the energy that goes into making all those connections with bears — but is this energy well spent? In whose mind are the connections being made — the teacher's or the children's? Moreover, what's the effect of making all these connections? What do the children remember more: the math or the Gummy Bears? Content and concepts in math and science seem particularly jeopardized by some thematic units, in which the children may remember a fun activity or role-playing exercise, but have little grasp of, for example, the food chain, or how to add fractions with unlike denominators.
In the case of the "theme of teddy bears," as Professor Roth observes, "Thoughtful decisions about curriculum content and goals were superseded by one central command: how well something fit with the theme." Clearly, something has gone awry when the tail wags the dog.
A good theme, thoughtfully selected and judiciously applied, might help clarify and organize: it might provide a central idea or question that, like a lens, helps focus and define a unit of study, revealing what may not have been immediately apparent. Some popular themes, however — for example, bears, apples, "Discovery," "Systems," "Change" — are less like lenses than shopping bags: you can stuff just about anything into them. As Professor Roth observes, the problem with such themes is that they tend to be "selected more for ... the availability of materials, the interests of the teacher, and whether they would lend themselves to fun activities for the children, rather than how important and useful the ideas are within the discipline, [and] how powerful the ideas might be for the students. . . . "
From Good Idea to Idee Fixe
Another potential problem with thematic instruction-as revealed by how often the topic comes up in educational journals, teacher preparation programs, and professional development activities — is the way in which a good idea gets turned into an idee fixe. Instead of thematic instruction being offered as an occasionally useful tool, it has been transformed into a Philosophy, a Way of Life, an Unshakable Truth.
In a pendulum swing typical of the all-or-nothing absolutism of educational "innovations, " the rush to embrace the interdisciplinary has led some to condemn the traditional subject-matter disciplines. These fervent connectors scorn those who still prefer the linear outline to the web, or who still devote 45 minutes to math, an hour to Language Arts, and 45 minutes to History. And then, as though it were conclusive proof, these ardent advocates of the interdisciplinary offer some variation on the cliche that "in the real world knowledge isn't divided into separate disciplines. When I wake up I don't do math for thirty minutes and then English for an hour. Everything is interconnected."
The idea that "everything is interconnected" is a powerful but partial truth, applicable more to metaphysics or ecology than pedagogy. In the classroom, well-intentioned but overzealous attempts to interconnect everything may impede rather than advance learning. The traditional subject-matter disciplines offer concepts and categories that help us make sense of the world: boundaries can be as useful as bridges.
A disciplinary, and disciplined, focus on history gives us knowledge of past, helps us to see events in historical context and to understand the interplay of causation and accident in human affairs. In English (or Language Arts), we focus on language, on its creative possibilities and conventional restrictions, on textual nuance, on the skills of reasoned argument, on a rich legacy of poetry and prose. In math, we develop greater fluency with operations and algorithms, as well as an increasingly sophisticated sense of quantitative relations and reasoning. In science, we learn about the natural world and its process as we develop the careful habit of making hypotheses, predicting results, conducting experiments, collecting data, modifying our original hypotheses, etc.
This is not to say that the historian should pay no attention to textual nuance, or that the scientist should be ignorant of the past. Clearly, the boundaries between disciplines are not absolute. Nevertheless, the disciplines, as traditionally defined, offer specific emphases that we need to retain, not reject, in the rush to interdisciplinary instruction.
On this point Professor Roth makes an eloquent appeal:
There are many who believe that the only way to see the world holistically is to erase disciplinary boundaries, and to do so from the earliest years of schooling. I would urge caution. An alternative view is that we best develop our students' understanding of the world and its connectedness by giving them access to a variety of powerful lenses through which to view it, and that the best way to craft those lenses is to immerse our students deeply (though perhaps not solely) in disciplinary study.
Yes, make interdisciplinary connections when logical, natural, and appropriate, but do not altogether throw out the subject-matter disciplines or the organization of classroom instruction according to those disciplines. Connect when it makes sense, not simply for the sake of connecting, or just because everybody's doing it.
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Last updated: Fri, March 14 2008
