The community as text : using planning as a vehicle for interdisciplinary education

Abstract

Many American schools fail to teach students about the built environment. However, there is both scholarly and anecdotal evidence that using students' communities as a teaching tool is an effective method for increasing student engagement and increased knowledge retention, as well as improving their knowledge transfer and higher-level thinking skills. In this thesis, I argue that schools are missing an educational opportunity to by failing to incorporate students' neighborhoods into curricula in a sustained and interdisciplinary way. I argue that planning is an ideal vehicle for interdisciplinary education, but is also a worthwhile topic as an end in itself, teaching students about republicanism and civic engagement at a local level. This thesis looks at three programs that teach students about the built environment, and then offer a case study of how a more sustained program could implemented in an eighth-grade classroom in Dorchester, Massachusetts.