Breaking down the silos

I have written previously about the artificial divide between school subjects. Yes, there are practical reasons for teaching art separately to science, or maths in a different room to music. And yet, the separation of the subjects seems increasingly anachronistic in our diverse, post modern, hyper-connected society. If school is where we prepare children to be independent, knowledgeable and reflective individuals, then we may well be doing them a disservice by perpetuating the silo mentality prevalent in state funded education. Life simply isn't about compartmentalisation any more. The working day often passes in a blur of recognisable, but highly connected and blended ideas, activities and objects.

The art (design) and science that went into creating your iPhone for example, is well documented. Photography is art and science combined. The mathematical principles you learnt in school are no longer recognisable as such - because they are often applied differently and in the context of other influences, in a multitude of different ways during an average week. It is no surprise then, that a movement is growing to incorporate discrete subjects together in schools. The very act of combining disparate subjects from the curriculum, proponents claim, helps children to understand the world in entirely new ways and opens their eyes to new possibilities.

An article in the January 3rd 2014 edition of the Times Educational Supplement expresses exactly the sentiments above. Entitled: 'Sparks fly when art and science interact', the article reports on what happened when one school decided to organise a festival where scientists and artists could dialogue. The author, Hugh Jones reveals how this cross-curricular celebration of two apparently unrelated disciplines actually found much common ground. 'Life is rich in the variety of ways in which we interpret, communicate, argue and predict,' Jones writes, 'and we wanted to encourage our students to have a broad vision of these skills.'

During the festival, students were asked to answer questions such as 'what is the right space for art and science to collide?' and did many activities including making video recordings of artists and scientists discussing their work. 'The event really broadened how artists thought of science and how scientists thought of art' Jones says, 'and hopefully, the lesson that the two disciplines can work together will be a lasting one.'

There are several approaches to de-compartmentalisation of the curriculum. At Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand, I witnessed a group of students in the same learning space, wandering between three seemingly unrelated classes as 3 teachers ran their lessons. Students were able to choose at what point they entered and left each session, and how they interpreted their understanding not only of the lesson content, but how the three subjects related to each other.

Another approach is practised by the teachers at Skipton Girls School in Yorkshire, England. Skipton is a designated engineering academy, and students at the school regularly learn through the combined delivery of two or more subjects. One small group proudly showed me their project which combined Physics and Music. They were very proud of the work they had done around the analysis of audio waveforms, frequencies and sound synthesis to create their own songs. When I asked one student why it was so important to combine subjects, she replied 'It helps me to understand the world better.'

What are your views on cross-curricular teaching? Should we make a concerted effort to break down the subject silos, or should we maintain the status quo?

Image by Mike Licht


Breaking down the silos by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.