Are we educated?

James Hurst, one of my students, has posted the drft of his research project over on his blog and I immediately leapt to a discussion about the role of design education. I thought I'd quote it here.
James has invited people to comment on/argue with the different sections of his draft, which sounds quite an interesting thing to do. I've been thinking of getting my students into blogging as a way of learning collaboratively but keep putting it off, largely because (surprisingly) no one seems to have heard of blogs!

But it seems to me to be a way of encouraging dialogue between students in different disciplines and different institutions. Might be worth investigating a collaborative project using a blog as the means of communicating.

Anyway, here's what James says. (And just cos I'm quoting it, doesn't mean he's necessarily getting a good grade ;-)
Feel free to go over to his site and add your thoughts.

Pause Dog: "design education is based on learning skills, getting to grips with concepts, encouraging talent - and in some cases trying to install a code of ethics into the pupil. But we, as pupils, are not drawn out as education should be. More a void is filled, as Thomas Ockerse says, education is “too focussed on technique.”

It feels as a student that the courses are run the wrong way round. We are taught to fit into existing design companies - rather than being given the confidence to rethink what design actually is and with little support from design land to help instigate those changes. Academia is respected and listened to in so many industries, while in design there is not that confidence or respect anymore.

Unlike some courses where teamwork is a core element, design students are taught to become, as Victor Papanek articulates “narrowly vertical specialists, where as the real need is for broad, horizontal generalists or synthesists.” The drive for specialisation is driven by the concern for jobs, and while the specialist may be good at one thing, industry and professions need students with a broad background. Nature has shown us too many times how over specialisation has led to extinction.

Karen Blincoe extends this philosophy highlighting that design graduates do not understand the complex organisms that are businesses, and that students do not learn their role in negotiating within a company.

If education is supposed to propagate thinking and change, we are certainly in a glut. Every year there are more design students, while every year the problems affecting us, locally and globally, increase. There is an undertone of environmental malaise amongst students while at the same time we are exhausting resources. As the latest Tsunami reminds us, the dangers of ecological disaster are very real. If education is going to save us E.F. Schumacher writes, “it would have to be an education of a different kind: an education that takes us into the depth of things.”

A view that Antoine De Saint-Exupery articulated when he stated that “one cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements, and crossword puzzles. That is impossible.”

As the world changes, and the requirements of the designer change, introducing and encouraging students to explore sustainability can only increase a courses marketability.
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