Multidisciplinary Learning
Can knowledge be segregated into watertight compartments called physics, maths, literature, etc? A farmer uses science, economics, geography, and traditions together. When you read a newspaper, you bring language, history, ethics, and logic simultaneously into play. Why should a student’s learning be cut up into segments that seem to have no connection with each other? Children think in wholes, not compartments. A child’s mind is not a timetable at all. Have you ever listened to children’s conversations? The sight of a bird can make them speak about a caged bird they saw somewhere, the question of freedom, migration of birds, a story about a bird they heard from grandma… They are all interrelated in the child’s mind. Children don’t begin by separating. Facts and feelings go together for them. Logic and imagination too. It is the school that separates the numbers and the stories into math and language periods. A good teacher doesn’t say: “Stay within the subject.” She says (someti...
