Neville Brody: removal of design from school curriculum is 'insanity'
"plans to remove creative subjects from the UK curriculum are 'short-sighted insanity', according to incoming D&AD president Neville Brody (+ interview).
Speaking to Dezeen, Brody described government plans to overhaul the curriculum as 'one of the biggest mistakes in British government' and added: 'The UK government is trying to demolish and smash all ideas about creative education.'
In September, education secretary Michael Gove announced plans to replace GCSE examinations for students up to the age of 16 with a new English baccalaureate (EBacc) system. Creative subjects such as art and design will not count towards the EBacc qualifications, which instead are graded on performance in academic 'stem' subjects. These stem subjects are English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language. ...
'The creative industries need high-quality creative graduates. If we're not getting the graduates, we're not going to sustain the industry,' said Brody. 'Creative services as a percentage of GDP is higher here than any other country, so why would you not want to support, promote and build that?'"
(Dezeen, 26 November 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Chris TreweekSHARE
Why Design Education Must Change
"even were a design school to decide to teach more formal methods, we don't really have a curriculum that is appropriate for designers. Take my concern about the lack of experimental rigor. Suppose you were to agree with me - what courses would we teach? We don't really know. The experimental methods of the social and behavioral sciences are not well suited for the issues faced by designers.
Designers are practitioners, which means they are not trying to extend the knowledge base of science but instead, to apply the knowledge. The designer's goal is to have large, important impact. Scientists are interested in truth, often in the distinction between the predictions of two differing theories. The differences they look for are quite small: often statistically significant but in terms of applied impact, quite unimportant. Experiments that carefully control for numerous possible biases and that use large numbers of experimental observers are inappropriate for designers.
The designer needs results immediately, in hours or at possibly a few days. Quite often tests of 5 to 10 people are quite sufficient. Yes, attention must be paid to the possible biases (such as experimenter biases and the impact of order of presentation of tests), but if one is looking for large effect, it should be possible to do tests that are simpler and faster than are used by the scientific community will suffice. Designs don't have to be optimal or perfect: results that are not quite optimum or les than perfect are often completely satisfactory for everyday usage. No everyday product is perfect, nor need they be. We need experimental techniques that recognize these pragmatic, applied goals.
Design needs to develop its own experimental methods. They should be simple and quick, looking for large phenomena and conditions that are 'good enough.' But they must still be sensitive to statistical variability and experimental biases. These methods do not exist: we need some sympathetic statisticians to work with designers to develop these new, appropriate methods."
(Don Norman, 26 Nov 2010, Core77)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Design-based Learning for Knowledge-based Economies
"in the ninety years since the creation of the Bauhaus, design educators have constantly challenged the definition of design as a discipline, consequently reshaping the mission and vision of design programs. With the advent of the Bauhaus, design emerged as the integration of artistic methods with scientific principles in order to educate a new generation of artists and craftsmen and better train them to infuse humanistic values into industrial production systems. Later, with the incorporation of design into higher education, it became a self-contained discipline as part of the arts and sciences responsible for the production of knowledge, followed by a process of branching out to multiple specializations within the design discipline. Since then, designers have graduated as experts instrumental in the development of new products and communication strategies demanded by market economies. Curiously, while in the professional context the design discipline has been interpreted as business function, in education, design and business-related disciplines such as marketing, management, and finance were separated by ideological principles and credit distribution requirements. Consequently, the design, business, and liberal arts disciplines were never combined into one program, despite the clear signals that these disciplines are complementary and dependent on each other in terms of imagining new ways of infusing social and environmental principles within resilient production systems regulated by market economies."
(Carlos Teixeira, p.560-561, IASDR 2009)
1). Teixeira, C. (2009). The Entrepreneurial Design Curriculum: Design-based Learning for Knowledge-based Economies. International Association of Societies of Design Research. Seoul, Korea.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
