Insights

A school transmits knowledge, but it also teaches children how to connect ideas. In a world where they encounter an immense flow of information every day, the question is no longer simply what they should know. It is also how one piece of knowledge illuminates another, how an idea travels between disciplines and how learning becomes a more attentive way of inhabiting the world.

It is from this perspective that Union School chooses each year to shape part of its educational project around a major cross-curricular theme. The theme replaces neither the curriculum nor the carefully planned progression within each subject. It gives them a shared horizon. It creates connections, prompts questions and enables pupils to recognise, within the diversity of their learning, a common intellectual adventure.

 

A theme does not simplify knowledge: it sets it in motion

A major theme is not a decorative layer applied to the school year. It becomes meaningful when it is broad enough to be examined from several viewpoints, yet precise enough to provide direction. Literature can offer its narratives; science, its methods of observation; history, its depth; the arts, their forms; and philosophy, its questions.

Children then discover that an object of knowledge never belongs entirely to a single discipline. A work of art speaks to its historical period; a scientific discovery transforms our understanding of life; a literary text raises an ethical question. This shift is essential: knowledge ceases to appear as a sequence of separate compartments and becomes a network of relationships.

Giving learning meaning

One of education’s central challenges is to make the purpose of learning visible. Foundational skills require repetition, precision and progression, yet their necessity alone does not always sustain a child’s desire to learn. A cross-curricular theme provides a context in which reading, writing, calculating, observing and reasoning respond to a larger question.

Writing may be used to capture an encounter. Measurement makes it possible to compare phenomena. Reading opens a path into an author’s thought. Drawing becomes a way of examining form. When learning takes place within a project that children can understand, its significance becomes clearer. Pupils are no longer working solely to complete an exercise: they are using intellectual tools to explore a subject that engages them.

Connecting disciplines without confusing them

Cross-curricular learning does not erase individual subjects. On the contrary, it depends on each discipline retaining its rigour, language and methods. A text is not examined in the same way as a scientific hypothesis; a painting is not approached like a set of data. Yet bringing these different methods into conversation helps children understand what each one allows us to see.

This articulation develops intellectual flexibility. It teaches pupils to change perspective, compare forms of evidence, distinguish observation from interpretation and transfer knowledge from one context to another. In other words, it helps them not only to know, but to think with what they know.

Making curiosity a lasting disposition

Curiosity rarely grows from an isolated answer. It develops when one discovery leads to another. A major theme creates this continuity: a book prepares the way for a visit, an experiment prompts a debate, and an encounter changes the way a work of art is seen. Pupils begin to anticipate connections and formulate questions of their own.

School thereby becomes a place of collective enquiry. Teachers transmit, guide and structure knowledge, but they can also demonstrate that every subject retains an element of the unknown. Children discover that knowledge is not merely a collection of finished results: it emerges from observation, debate, intuition and research. This awareness helps form active minds, capable of both wonder and discernment.

Creating a shared culture

An annual theme gives pupils of different ages a common vocabulary and shared points of reference. Younger children approach it through sensory experience, stories and play; older pupils explore concepts, sources and implications in greater depth. Each child progresses at an appropriate level, while everyone takes part in the same exploration.

This shared culture extends beyond the classroom. It connects teachers through coordinated projects, invites families to continue certain conversations and enables visiting speakers to contribute to an intellectual journey already under way. Exhibitions, assemblies, reading, educational visits and pupils’ work are no longer a sequence of separate events: they become stages in the development of a common line of thought.

Bringing new voices and experiences into school

Meeting a researcher, artist, author or practitioner transforms a child’s relationship with knowledge. Pupils encounter someone for whom the subject is not simply a chapter in a textbook, but a life of research, creation or commitment. Guests bring expertise, but they also reveal the doubt, method, passion and occasional detours that accompany any significant body of work.

A cross-curricular theme gives these encounters greater depth. Pupils already possess points of reference, prepare their questions and compare what they have learned with an individual experience. The expert does not interrupt the curriculum: their presence extends a collective enquiry and gives it renewed substance.

2026–2027: Animal Intelligences

Following our “Year of Breath”, Union School will devote the 2026–2027 academic year to “Animal Intelligences”. For centuries, intelligence was often considered the exclusive preserve of human beings. Contemporary ethology invites us to reconsider that assumption. Many species communicate, cooperate, learn, transmit knowledge, innovate, remember, devise strategies and make collective decisions.

The theme offers an exceptional field of exploration. Science will allow pupils to study behaviour and habitats; literature and philosophy will question the boundaries we draw between human beings and animals; the arts will reveal the diversity of our representations of the living world; and history will illuminate the evolution of both knowledge and sensibility.

Observing animal intelligences also leads us to reflect upon our own: its forms, its limits and the criteria by which we claim to measure it. For children, this approach brings wonder and rigour together. It teaches them to look before drawing conclusions, resist received ideas and recognise the complexity of life.

A curator to guide the exploration

To guide this year, Union School is delighted to welcome Yolaine de La Bigne as its curator. A journalist, author and founder of L’Animal et l’Homme, she has spent many years bringing research into animal behaviour and abilities to a wider audience. Her intellectual rigour, gift for communication and distinctive humour will accompany the school’s thinking throughout the year.

Yolaine de La Bigne will help shape the programme and introduce pupils to ethologists, veterinarians, authors and other specialists. Their contributions will be announced as the year unfolds. Together, they will enable pupils to explore the many forms of animal intelligence without reducing them to a comparison with human intelligence.

A school year as a collective work

Choosing a major theme means believing that a school year can possess unity without becoming uniform. Each discipline retains its own voice, each class its own rhythm and each encounter its singular character. Yet all contribute to a shared undertaking: teaching children that understanding means making connections, accepting complexity and remaining open to whatever unsettles our certainties.

A school cannot anticipate every question that such an exploration will inspire. That is precisely where its value lies. The theme provides direction; pupils, teachers, families and guests give it depth. Together, they transform the school year into a territory of enquiry, culture and shared wonder.