It is not uncommon for would-be curriculum reformers to decry the fact that our schools are organized in different disciplines, and thus different departments. This affects not only curriculum, but also hiring and in general a certain view of education that separates human endeavors into separate, disconnected “siloes”. Sometimes, this complaint leads to the creation of interdisciplinary courses. Much more rarely it leads to a comprehensive rethinking of secondary schools, with the abolition of departmental divisions and the creation of entirely new interdisciplinary curriculums, e.g. merging literature and history, science and math, and so on.
These experiments rarely last more than a few years for various reasons: they fail in one way or another, they are difficult to staff, they do not match district or state standards, and so on. Quite often, they water down the disciplinary content by lowering expectations. For example, high school students get to review percents and proportional reasoning, or such topics as mean vs. median, when those are actually middle school topics.
A more successful approach is the teaching of parallel, disciplinary, courses which reinforce each other. An example might be a History course on the US in the twentieth century alongside an English course on American literature from that time period. Or an introduction to the physics and mathematics of motion offered in those two departments. But again, those experiments are usually short-lived, as they entail complications for the scheduling of both teachers and students.
While I respect the impulse behind those attempts and admire the ambition of those involved, I think that we serve our students better when we take a different approach: unwavering disciplinary priorities within departmental offerings, combined with genuine attempts at making connections with other fields within those courses. It is not difficult to find math textbooks with grade-level content that make such connections. I got great ideas along these lines in the books by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, in the works of Paul Foerster, and in many other resources. Those ideas influenced my own curriculum development, as you can see for example in Algebra: Themes, Tools, Concepts,, and in my Algebra 2 and Precalculus materials.
Such connections are typically to physics or social studies, but there is no reason to stop there. I once co-taught a half-semester “Math and Art” high school elective, along with an art teacher. (As is to be expected, we only got to do this once or twice.) Here is the course description:
Both mathematics and art investigate pattern and the nature of space. In many cultures and eras the two have inspired each other. This class will study: the golden ratio, squaring the circle, regular solids (Ancient Greek); a sophisticated understanding of symmetry (Islam); Latin and magic squares (Middle Ages); projective geometry (Renaissance); group theory (nineteenth century); Escher, recreational math, computer graphics (twentieth century). Students will use the lessons as a starting point for creating their own art.
We did not get very deep into some of these topics, but I was able to develop some interesting high school-appropriate lessons within that framework. Once the course could no longer be offered, a nice payoff was that I was able to inject some of its content into other classes, as grade-level math-art connections:
- Basic geometry. Squaring the circle yielded two activities: Leonardo’s Areas and Squaring Pentominoes. (Unfortunately, only the first made it into my geometry class.)
- Algebra 2. Projective geometry yielded the Perspective lab activity.
- Advanced geometry. Regular solids, symmetry, and a basic introduction to groups became core topics in my Space course. (On my website, see also Symmetry and Abstract Algebra.)
Does this positive experience contradict my overall critique of interdisciplinary learning? Not at all: this course was intended to complement, not replace, the classes offered by the math and art departments. This was genuine “enrichment” for the students who got to take the class, and took nothing away from the essential disciplinary learning that they pursued in other classes. It is an example of one way to do this right.
Here is a painting by one of our students:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
— Henri