4.5.3 Reasons for Integration

There are several reasons why subjects should be integrated.

• The subjects taught are the result of a long development but their subject matter soon becomes outdated. This might support a case for extending the subjects and modifying the subject matter instead of integrating subjects.
• Education organized into separate-subjects might produce an excess of subject matter. This is not only a characteristic of education with separate-subjects, because the same can happen with correlated-subjects, if insufficient attention is paid to the fact that subject matter should be relevant to children and society.
• Subjects lead to an overestimation of the teaching form of education. This could be the justified criticism of a teacher who thinks that it is important to get through as much subject matter as possible. However, educational forms such as self- active learning and working in groups can occur when subjects are correlated.
• Teaching separate-subjects could retard the integration in learning experiences of pupils. Undoubtedly this could be true when subjects are presented without any correlation.
• The subjects are cognition-centered. The relationship with science often focuses attention on the subject matter. On the other hand, the same thing could happen in a child-centered education.