Reflection 7

In the article by Kathy Lake called Integrated Curriculum, she cited that Benjamin presented four trends that are relevant to integrating curriculum. They are as follow: global interdependence and interconnectedness of complex systems, increasing the pace and complexity in the twenty-first century, to expand the body of knowledge, and to have people use their knowledge of various fields in order to solve the problems of interrelated factors. The one major reason for trends is to help teachers because every school year they have more things added to the curriculum and not enough time to teach, the teachers feel like they are been pushed to different ways so this is one of the reasons they are motivated in order to push for integrated curriculum. The schools need to be pushed away from isolating subjects and move toward a more constructive view on learning which main focus is to teach in-depth knowledge of various subjects. All these view are taken from Piaget, Bruner, Dewey and other who have the same point of view because they are concerned with having the students understand the concepts and the structures.
The four trends involves integrated curriculum because it focus on making meaningful concepts and connections between subjects instead of having students memorize isolated facts. In a way the students will be able to not only understand material in depth but also have a broader sense. Making education more meaningful to the students will increase the success of the students because they are able to see the importance and how it relates to real life, so many of the students do not like school because they do not see how that they are learning is going to benefit them in the future. Like Benjamin stated there needs to be connections between school and real life situation, education needs to be more complex in order to keep up with the twenty-first century, and new discoveries are happening as we speak so knowledge needs to expand.