The challenge to structure and restructure the public education system is an ongoing and endless conversation. Currently, so many demands are being made of students at a younger and younger age: you need to know more and more, you need to understand how this more and more works, and you need to do something with this understanding. The need for an interdisciplinary education system in our contemporary society is clear. But how do we go about creating this system? How can we begin making this change?
Joe Moran grounds the definition of his text’s title, Interdisciplinarity, in a comment made on its adjectival form by Frank: “
“‘‘Interdisciplinary’ has something to please everyone. Its base, discipline, is hoary and antiseptic; its prefix, inter, is hairy and friendly. Unlike fields, with their mud, cows, and corn, the Latinate discipline comes encased in stainless steel: it suggests something rigorous, aggressive, hazardous to master; Inter hints that knowledge is a warm, mutually developing, consultative thing.’” (Moran 3)
Though in concert with Frank’s thoughts, Moran challenges them, asking the question: “ . . . how exactly does interdisciplinary research aspire to be ‘warm, mutually developing, consultative’?” (Moran 3). This question is a difficult one to grapple with. But I think focusing on it provides a path to a change needed in the education system. When there is so much that children are supposed to know, how are schools and teachers expected to prepare them for this interdisciplinary way of learning? My answer, though maybe cheesy, is to start in the heart: to start close to home.
I went to an public elementary school in New York City called Midtown West; it was one of the best experiences of my life. It was the first community I entered outside of my home, and it nurtured me in ways that immensely shaped my person. Part of what influenced me so was this community’s value of community. My school comprised of families from an extremely diverse array of racial, financial, religious, and cultural backgrounds. What physically brought us kids together was our parents shared desire for their kids to receive a great education: to place us in a community that would nurture us as individuals while teaching us to celebrate the power of coming together with others. And ultimately, over the course of our six years together, this coming together did happen. Growing up with kids from an array of different backgrounds forced us to confront questions of diversity at a young age. We were encouraged to look past our differences by learning about them, fostering a sense of respect for them, and acknowledging how, amongst our differences, we can still have so much in common.
My school based its curriculum on a Bank Street model, which is a particular branch of educational philosophy that grounds itself in gradual, experiential social studies. We made use of this model by taking a look at all of the different communities that our student body was a part of. In the first few years, the curriculum emphasized learning about community through learning about one another’s home communities. We conducted class home visits to each child’s home, during which parents would do a presentation on what makes up their family community: its members, cultures, routines, stories, etc.
Each year, our realm of study grew a little larger. Our home study turned into a neighborhood study, park study, city study, global culture study etc. In order to begin our fifth grade study about diversity within our global civilization, we first began with a kindergarten study of the diversity within our own classroom. We did what we were capable of doing. We took things a step at a time. And as our realm of understanding grew, so did our realm of study. By experiencing things hands on, we were taught to make interdisciplinary connections in real life: to understand how everything is connected, the big and the small.