What is the purpose of integrating curriculum across disciplines?
The purpose of integrating curriculum across disciplines is to show students the interconnectedness of ideas. New ideas are not developed in a vacuum, but are rather influenced strongly by those developed in other academic fields. For example, state legislatures debating a new government policy may be influenced by scientific research (using mathematical analysis), economic and environmental impact reports, lobbying political interest groups, constitutional laws and historic policy decisions, etc. If we are teaching our students how to pose questions and solve problems that exist in the real world, they must be able to think critically and explore any topic from multiple perspectives. Students at HTHI are not only exposed to integration through their combined math/science courses and English/history (humanities) courses, but also via the team teaching structure in the lower grades. Core teachers share approximately 50 students, 2 classes of ~25 students each, and are therefore able to