I should start off by saying I teach preschool and I have not experienced first hand the coverage vs. depth dilemna. (If we want to explore how to make mud, we will spend however long we need and get as deep as we want to until the kids have learned everything that they would like to find out about mud)  However, in the majority of conversations I have had with high school teachers about their practice, they express the concern stated above, "How can we give time to this when we have so much material to cover?" 

The majority of the teachers I talk to would love to explore a topic in depth involving the students in engaging activities that they are invested in.  However, they feel their hands are tied by the content dilemna.

In a way, I feel the early years approach could serve as a model for educational reform.  In the early years, we aim to create an environment for children to explore and ask questions.  Our main focus is scaffolding their explorations so they learn to seek answers on their own.  There is an overwhelming excitement and celebration over new discoveries. 

Shouldn't the primary focus of our school system be to foster learning by encouraging students in building their own knowledge?  Wouldn't this set up individuals for a more successful future with the ability to guide their own learning and seek answers to questions on their own?  I was a successful student throughout school, but the majority of the content that I was able to memorize at the time is lost to me now.   

My impression is that there is an overwhelming majority of teachers that agree with this model/stance.  I understand there is a certain amount of content that students should learn through school, but I maintain the process is almost always more important than the content. 

Albeit, it is much easier for me to say without the pressures of GPA, SAT, IB, and college entrance.  

When will the revolution happen???

Hre's a thought experiment for you, or rather a question I've asked myself from time to time.  As a math person who therefore never is required to use or think about history, I've forgotten nearly all the history I learned in high school.  I learned it well enough in high school to do well on tests; indeed, I was such a good test-taker that I tested out of taking the gen ed history in college.  Pondering this fact has led me to the following two questions: 

1)  Was there value in my learning all that stuff in the first place?  If so, what?  (The answer to this question isn't entirely obvious to me--and it applies widely, because long-term retention in general, for all subjects, is some rather small percentage of what we learn.)

2)  If "outcomes" is what it's all about (and frankly I don't think it is)--what kind of test would we give to people say ten or twenty  years after graduation to find out what the impact of our education really was?  And how  would that test--which presumably would address the actual "value added" of our education--be related to the tests we're giving kids in schools?

As for "breadth vs. depth"--it's been with us a long time, and I doubt it's going away any time soon.  Part of the reason is that different people value different things in the curriculum.  As soon as anyone suggests tossing something out to make time for more depth (or a new topic, for that matter) someone else will rise up in passionate defense of the threatened material.  "How can you say ___ isn't important!?"  
It used to be that individual teachers chould prioritize and spend more time on some things, less or none on others--but no longer.  It's one of the reasons people end up teaching to the test.  If you can't do everything--and you can't, or as I prefer and often tell my students, it's not that the teacher can't cover the material, it's that the students get lost in the process--you have to set priorities, and if the jobs of every adult in the system depend on kids scoring well on tests, the test will set the priorities.  To say nothing of fairness to kids--it's no fun for them to be tested on material they have had zero opportunity to learn.  

My own preference would be to set clear priorities in the curriculum, and do them in depth in basic courses, and address other topics in electives to get a bit more breadth.  Easier said than done, of course.  Even if only one person were to attempt to set the priorities--let alone if we had to come to come kind of consensus about them.  Theoretically, that's what state standards are or should be doing, but they sure haven't been much help in California, at least.  Quite the opposite.
And of course, the problem is much worse for you history people, because more and more history keeps on happening all the time.  At least the math holds still a bit more--though it's not as static as most people think, and technology raises serious questions about how much of the traditional math curriculum is still relevant, and what else we maybe should be doing instead.

Hi Clay

Thanks for your response. This is in fact the 4th time that I have sat down and attempted to reply to your comment, all others have been lost one way or another, and so my fingers are crossed that I will actually make it to the ‘Submit Reply’ button.

I will share a wee secret with you, I almost totally agree with your points. Having been an extremely disaffected high school student myself, I have great sympathy with students who are being subjected to, what you have termed, ’schooliness’. Surely education should be about learning something useful rather than reciting something pointless.

As for your analogy about active learning, again, I am with you there. Prior to becoming a school teacher I spent a few years working as a sailing instructor that taught me a thing or too about the importance of active learning.

A couple of the techniques we used to prepare students for their first taste of controlling the boat on the water were descriptions aided by simple diagrams and dry land drills. Students would listen to the instructor describing a ‘tack’ or ‘gybe’ whilst watching him relate the description to a diagram on the board. The instructor would then move on to allow the students to practice the mechanics of the turn using a couple of chairs, a stick and a bit of rope. Finally, having mastered the theory and the praticalities of what to do with their hands and feet, they would be cast adrift on the water to apply this learning in context.

In my experience of high school the first step was used in almost every lesson, the second step was rarely ever used and the last step never employed except on field trips.

More on field trips later.

As for the experiment you mentioned, have you ever seen this guys attempt to pass A level sociology with only 2 weeks studying. Not sure about the aim or relevance of his experiment but I guess it does demonstrate that some people are able to ‘learn’ large chunks of information quickly more easily than others.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/aug/16/schools.aslevels

But can you really decide not to bother with certain aspects of the syllabus?

What about our obligations to prepare students for exams?

What would students want us to do? (I asked some of mine today-no answers yet)

What about ambitious parents paying astronomical school fees in the hope of (exchange for) top grades and Harvard scholarships?

I feel I have a professional responsibility regardless of my personal philosophy.

It might be because I am a bit green when it comes to the high school teaching game but I would like to think that I can cover the content and also assist in students developing some useful understanding and skills. I hope that web 2.0 tech will help me on this quest. I will certainly try.

Hmmmm fieldtrips.

Now you would think that field trips would be a great way of developing understanding, making connections, demonstrating relevance or at least getting the students actively involved.

Well, my experience of trips recently has been that the students spend a day walking around under the sun getting lectured to. That to me is the very essence of schooliness

I will keep you posted about my attempts to do something useful on the field trip front

Jay Matthews at WaPo just wrote about the issue, with new research seeming to support my theory about less content = higher test scores (for science, though).

Thought you might be interested.

It won't surprise you, Clay, that this is the point at which I begin to wax lyrical about how much I love MYP (and to a lesser extent, the DP).  And, now that I am reading this post, thinking about assessment, content, skills, un-schooling, and how it all fits together, I realize am rather puzzled that you've not yet explored any of the IBO's curricular frameworks.

MYP (and its primary-school cousin, PYP) allows for teachers in all subject areas to focus on depth rather than breadth, because the depths is where the skill is at -- most importantly, all those critical-thinking skills. In theory, in an MYP English A classroom (English A=English for native or near-native students), I could teach one primary text all year long. Now of course that would probably be rather boring, but my point here is that the text -- ie., the content does not matter. What does -- the skills needed to approach the content.

Like I said, I could go on, but I won't say much more here. Suffice it to say that my philosophy matches MYP's and involves teaching the skills required to make the content accessible. And the assessment? Lucky me: MYP assessment reflects my philsophy. In fact, in the English A assessment criteria, only one aspect of all 13 aspects has to do with "understanding of the topic or theme."

The first author of the "breadth versus depth" study and his colleagues have organized the National Testing Survey (testingsurvey.us). It's a great way to make a statement about testing.