This week an astronomer came and shared a bit about the importance of unifying knowledge and teaching cross curricular content. While he used it as a selling feature of teaching astronomy in the classroom the importance of relating subjects so students learn how everything works together and that information in one subject is not a disjoint tool that has no application in other realms. However, I am sure that unifying curriculum concepts in the sciences when students attend fragmented classes that clearly split content between them and provide little opportunity to transfer knowledge from one to the other will prove to be difficult.
The other day I was talking with Akim and he shared an interesting “eureka”, as he called it, on this issue. He mentioned that he had given the matter some thought and came up with the fact that all of the sciences revolve around the loose concept of ‘Energy’. After discussing it awhile we both figured that it could work. Biology is swimming in the need of energy to create life. Physics is full of energy from neutrons laws to thermodynamics and energy is also important when considering the atomic world of bonds in chemistry. After our conversation I walked away thinking, “this is great. The whole year could just be structured around the theme of energy regardless of the subject.” Yet, I think energy is a rather elusive idea. It is so present in our daily life that we all have large preconceived ideas and notions of what energy is and what it can and can’t represent, or do. I know that I seem to have a hazy understanding at best scientifically of what energy is and yet I ‘feel from experiences’ like I have a solid grasp on the concept somehow which does not make sense. It will be interesting learning more about energy to help students question their own experiences and think about what energy really is and how it is connected to various different approaches presented by, and definitions found in, biology, chemistry and physics.
