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Wiggins and McTighe initial idea about preparing final assessments first and then working from there to structure activities and lessons isn't an all bad idea. There is something to be said for teaching to the material that is going to be tested. Unfortunately for this book, they didn't stop at that point. By trying to take the process one step further and discuss what it means to understand material, the authors have created a fundamental contradiction in the text that is never truly resolved. The "backwards design" idea is a good idea, overall. Of course there is some danger in this idea too, given that it lends credence to those who think that education should be nothing more than teaching to a test, but overall, the authors have a valid point in that before teachers design activities, they ought to consider exactly what the end goal of those activities is going to be. Why teach everything about something, when there are only a couple of critical ideas that need to be addressed. By using this idea, the authors have addressed that depth in content coverage doesn't necessarily mean spending an entire semester on one idea, but rather by focusing on a couple of key points you can work to insure that a realistic understanding of the material is developed by the students. This is where the authors should have stopped. Instead, the authors continue on to address a basic point in educational theory, that people learn and develop understanding when the material is something they are truly interested in. In many respects, the authors are bringing up the same point that Gardner addresses in his theory of Multiple Intelligences. Herein lies the basic problem of the text, by allowing students to gain an understanding of something they are interested in, there cannot be an end goal set by the teacher. If the teacher is setting an end goal, if there is a critical point that must be understand and all activities are pointed toward developing an understanding of that end goal, the student is no longer pursuing an end goal that is their own. They are instead pursuing the teacher's end goal. Because of this inherent contradiction within the text, allow students to find the end goal that interests them the most, as long as that end goal is the same as the end goal set by the teacher, I cannot recommend this book as a means of modeling curriculum design. With the exception of identifying key objectives and understandings and working from there, the book largely creates a problem that is, at this point insurmountable.