Ssshh… Don’t Interrupt When Change Speaks
The biggest failing of our education system has been that it makes the young numb to the tickle of change. It promotes the idea of education as a job guarantee, and as a ticket to a cushy life. It however fails to build the character that is required of an adult to face her world and to also shape it; to lead and not just follow.
“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.”
-William Pollard
How deeply true is the above thought. Understanding that change is inevitable, is an evolution in human consciousness. Initiating change, therefore puts us in a better position to manage the change, as opposed to fighting it or simply enduring it.
Designers too, will be expected to be more than just spin doctors who put old wine in new bottles, they will be expected to lead change. Designers therefore should be able to:
1. Observe
2. Find opportunity
3. Collect pertinent data
4. Analyze data
5. Draw insights
6. Hunt for inspirations
7. Propose possibilities
8. Develop samples
9. Fabricate the prototype
10. Test it
11. Make modifications
12. Refine it to a finished form
Please note all the actions that constitute ‘designing’ are in bold. They’re active, and not passive in virtue. Nowhere in this observation of the design thinking process, is there a recommendation for ‘asking for permission’, ‘doing as one is told’, ‘imitating’ or ‘finding an idea that works.’ The mindset that is driven towards change is very different from the mind that is set on the ideas of success and guarantees. As designers of the education of the future, it is this mindset- geared to lead change- that our programs must help cultivate.
“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”
-Steven Spielberg
To observe is fundamental to the design process. It’s also moral, when it is a solitary act; when you see things with nothing but your own awareness. To enable the student to independently observe should be the most essential goal of a foundation program in design. Observing allows us to find opportunities. An opportunity as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is: A good chance, a favouarble occasion. A chance or opening offered by circumstances. Good fortune. I’d like to add, that an opportunity is also the chance to discover potentiality and make possible (the potential).
Opportunity, it must be noted, is entirely, in the eyes of the beholder. The ability to see opportunity requires a deeper vision, one that has come into being as a consequence of being on a quest…having a deep desire to understand what might be the way forward. Without this vision, one fails to see opportunity and can only see problems.
Problems are opportunities in disguise. Our inability to recognize and see opportunities where problems stand, alters the course of our destiny. A problem by virtue, requires a solution. It’s something we must either tackle, address or bypass. It feels bothersome and as a result, it stubbornly fixes and limits the discourse of design. We busy ourselves in designing ‘solutions’ for problems that are at best only imagined, or at worst, simply breeders of other, more complex problems.
An opportunity on the other hand is perceived as a chance to act thoughtfully. It enriches design discourse. It brings in fresh criticality to old concepts. It necessitates the search for insights. It leads us to meaningful and purposeful learning.
“Every project is an opportunity to learn, to figure out problems and challenges, to invent and re-invent.”
-David Rockwell
To paraphrase this, every project in our programs must be designed to be an opportunity
1. To learn
2. To figure out problems and challenges.
3. To invent and re-invent.
At present, the design of our classes, seems to view failure as an aberration, as a problem. Not only is it not seen as a golden opportunity to learn, to observe the problems and challenges first-hand, it’s seen as THE problem, that must be by-passed. Somehow, we confuse the failures of the outcomes of speculation and trial to the personal failures of the student. The result- the student would rather not think, would rather not try and would rather not risk a self-initiated attempt. Not only is risk-taking not rewarded, it’s not encouraged.
The ways in which we unwittingly do this are:
1. We are trying to discern evidence of a student’s learning in either her success or failure in fulfilling assigned tasks.
2. We are assigning tasks to test (and thereby assess) her understanding, preparation and efficiency.
3. Teaching and learning are construed as performances, where teacher and student must each perform a set of distinct tasks with proof that those tasks have been completed, so that the incidence of learning may be conjectured.
However, had teaching to be viewed or understood as being devoted to learning, we may actually transform each from being a performance, to becoming a consistency- a way of beingand not an act done (and then forgotten).
What if we:
1. Designed our classes to yield opportunities for learning?
2. Consciously set out to evaluate the difference between, when our classes are presented as opportunities to learn things of value as opposed to being a time and space where they must learn, a pre-determined set of values?
3. Assigned tasks not to test students’ abilities, but to provide opportunities for them to summon their own understanding and give them a chance to model their knowledge?
4. Simply boiled down all critical differences between ‘the wrong way’,’ a different way’ and ‘not the best way’to the essence of it being nothing more than a ‘changed way’? Would that allow us as educators to open up our own minds to the possibilities of innovation?
After all, an education for change, for innovation, cannot run in the same vein as one designed for continuity, stabilityand maintaining the status quo.Yet, the action to bring about this change must not be a hasty one. We must dwell on the questions that emerge from this contemplation:
1. How do we educate students who have been taught to follow, to now be geared to lead?
2. Do they need an indoctrination of methodsor do they need an engagement with practices?
3. Must an education for change and innovation, perpetuate the ways and practices that belong to the very world/ systems we want to bring change to? Or, must we reject outright, the old ways and replace them with new ideas that impress us with their courage to challenge?
4. Must our education make a clean break from the pedagogies of the past and risk that our students will not come across as being ‘knowledgeable’, ‘sophisticated’or ‘equipped’to continue the lineage of the industries they will come to work within?
5. How do we come to arrive at the centre of a glorious past, an ailing present and an uncertain future and be equipped to function creatively, intuitivelyand reflectively and come to be seen as valuable contributors to the fields within which we work?
Let this conclude as a question that hovers in your mind, as a constant reminder that these are not problems, but opportunities to grow…to be who we’ve never allowed ourselves to be.
