Deep and Wide: Is the Fountain Flowing? Or, Are the Waters Mmmmuddied?

Referred to in previous blog entry

Michigan State University
ED 800 Concepts of Educational Inquiry
Unit 4 Writing Assignment

Leslee Moyse
November 15, 2008

Deep and Wide: Is the Fountain Flowing? Or, Are the Waters Mmmmuddied?

“Deep and wide,
deep and wide,
there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.
Deep and wide,
deep and wide,
there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.”

When I was a kid, these were words sung, with actions, in our Sunday School class. The tune would be repeated over and over, slowly removing a word each time, replacing it with “Mmmm…” until the song sounded like this:

“Mmmm and mmmm,
Mmmm and mmmm,
there’s a fountain flowing mmmm and mmmm.”

As I’ve read through and reflected on Gardner’s deep approach to education (Gardner, 2000: 118) and Hirsch’s wide approach (Hirsch 1983), I think, in order for the fountain of knowledge and understanding to keep flowing, there needs to be a bit more… harmony. As Rodney King aptly put it, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” (Wikipedia). (I believe Sly and the Family Stone would echo such sentiments.)

The question posed for this unit was, “What can be learned about curriculum inquiry from the interaction of competing ideas?” While there was much to learn about curriculum inquiry, I found the idea of competition to be a complicating factor. With the vocalists singing the “Mmmm and mmmm…” parts in the faces of others rather than listening for the music that can be made when opposing members of the dueling duet (or tangled trio… or quarreling quartet for that matter) complement one another, a distracting dissonance entered into the score.

I found this to be true during the NPR interview (1998), for example, when Gardner tossed around phrases like, “the sole purpose of school is a collection of hollow information”, “facts are disciplinarily neutral”, and “a cluttered mind can’t think clearly” when referring to Hirsch’s cultural literacy model. Similar statements, like “cultural literacy… amounts to a hodgepodge of concepts and facts” (Gardner, 2000: 118) were sprinkled throughout The Disciplined Mind. I concur, to some extent, with Hirsch in his statement that Gardner was thinking in “polarized terms” (NPR, 1998), which was somewhat alarming coming from someone touting consideration and exploration of “the true, the beautiful, and the good” and depth of understanding. At times, I wondered, as Hirsch articulated in the interview, if Gardner “understands” cultural literacy? Did Gardner not have to have some factual knowledge of evolution, Mozart, and the Holocaust at hand to fill the pages of his book with illustrative explanations and examples of… understanding? My question is: why do the two approaches, the deep and the wide, have to be mutually exclusive? Why does it have to be… pieces versus ponderings, fact-finding versus philosophizing, or tidbits versus “truths”? I acknowledge this is a bit of an exaggeration, but, at the very least, where’s the harmony?

Where was the conversation capitalizing on shared ideas like: intrinsic motivation (Gardner, 2000: 218; Gootman, 2008; Hirsch, 2001; NPR-Hirsch, 1998) or curricular connections (Gardner, 2000: 157; Hirsch, 2001; Kennedy Manzo, 2008) or civic responsibility (Cuban, 2004; Gardner, 245; Hirsch, 1983)? Can the deep and the wide not work together to accomplish these common goals? I realize the two primary competitors, Gardner and Hirsch, are committed to their respective approaches, but why not work together to feed the fountain that it might truly be deep AND wide?

Perhaps the “Mmmm” needs to be “Hmmm….”