Double Scheduling - A Shell Game

Double Scheduling - A Shell Game

According to B. Shoemaker, an integrated curriculum is education that is organized in such a way that it reaches across subject-matter lines, webbing together various aspects of the curriculum into meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study (Shoemaker, 1989).

Our minds work by association: Memory is the ability to connect present things with past learning.
Creativity is the ability to connect things not normally connected.

An integrated curriculum sounds like a wonderful idea, and is part of what your child needs to succeed in life, as past efforts to compartmentalize education into three subjects (reading, writing, arithmetic) simply results in isolated concepts with little skill at interconnecting those concepts into an integrated whole.

Find me a job where you only need arithmetic and no reading or writing and that's a rare job, indeed!

However, due to the increased legislation in our educational system, a system with at least six levels of administration, and many more agendas in addition from various agencies, our public schools have had their days divided into X amount of time for reading, X amount of time for writing, X amount of time for math, X amount of time for writing, X amount of time for science, X amount of time for social studies.

Into that schedule, they must put lunch, recess, P.E., possibly art and music, library time, transition time for travel, and on top of that any other agendas, like time for charities to teach our kids to make them money (at least three times a year or more - check your own school), fund-raising training, assemblies (including morning assemblies), teacher issues of importance (like who they think should be President), etc.

At present, it would be very odd indeed if your school was not unethically playing the double dip game of teaching social studies at the same time as they teach writing, so when they get asked: "Do you teach 30 minutes of writing?" they can answer, "Yes, we do."  When they are asked, "Do you teach 30 minutes of social studies?" the answer is, "Yes, we do."

What they don't tell you is that they teach them at the same time.

We could just lump all the subjects together and do a paper about the mathematics of the Civil Rights leader's biological functioning read from our research.

They're skirting the multiple legislated mandates for how long you teach a given subject by overlapping things and pretending they are meeting them.  It's a lie.  It's a common lie.  And they are in a position where if they complain, they are punished.  Each level of administration becomes the enforcer for a practice that is both unethical and utterly pretend: We teach x amount each day of this subject.

This is not what webbing, or integrated curriculum, was meant to be.

Let's get practical: What can you do?
1) Go to your school and see where they do this.
2) Complain to your principal (the teacher does not control this, though they can always switch it to a different subject combination, and thus the principal can say, "That's up to the teacher." Complain about the practice, not the teacher.  Tell them you will be going to the school board about it and discussing it at the PTA.
3) DO discuss it at the PTA and suggest a visit to the school board.
They will tell you it is common practice.  They will discourage you.  Folks, spanking kids with yardsticks and paddles was common practice.  You decide what will be common practice in the future - if you take that power.
4) Go to the school board.  Prepare ahead of time.  Listen to their answers and vote for the school board members accordingly.
5) Do it yearly.

Or let it go.
Easy to do.

The question is, are you able to learn how to program a computer while learning how to build a house simultaneously?

Or do you see the shell-game, yet?