School's Out for Summer

Science and math compliment each other. Most of the classes I took had a math prerequisite. Having them taught with two different instructors, left me somewhat confused.

While taking chemistry and pre-calculus during the same semester, we covered logarithms at the same time. Finally the value of logs made sense. I aced the test in both classes because the subjects paralleled each other.

I told the math teacher that the "word problems" within the text book were vague and difficult to understand, but doing the exact same thing IN chemistry, made it all become clear.

I think that math and science classes need to be taught together. I mentioned this to some friends and they suggested that humanities have similar complimentary classes. Things like social studies, literature and even history all go together. Often my literature instructor talked about the times in which a story was written and explained how that colored the perspective of the author. Dry history  turns into exciting river rapids if taught with a flair for the social nuances of the times in which it was happening.

Teaching these classes in a complimentary way would benefit students by engaging them more in the topics. With math, it's way easier to understand logs if you use the calculation for something you can see. With literature, Jonothan Swift's "A Modest Proposal,' takes on a whole new meaning if you understand the Irish famine and political problems of the day.

Yes, it's a more complicated educational model and would require far more educator coordination. Plus it goes against the status quo.

Perhaps such a plan could begin with a simple coordination of subjects. When I took college level theater as literature along with film as literature, the professor complimented the two classes. Not everything did a direct connection, but we did watch two different films about Shakespeare's Richard III while we read the play. We also saw a live performance. All in the span of a week.

We didn't, but we could have talked about the history of that king in our history class. Those two professors could have simply coordinated and shared a brief examination of the truth versus reality of the fictional accounts.

We did talk about these things with regard to the fictional portrayal of William Wallace. Though Braveheart wasn't one of the films we viewed in our literature class.

What class combinations would you like to see? For educators, have you had experience with any kind of coordination with other subjects? How did these work out? Kind and thoughtful comments welcome.