Dear Victor,
Good to hear from you. I take it that you disagree with the idea that Design
History should have a less central role in Design education and research?
I started the analysis that led to that post from a raft of simple
questions, taking the position that Design History has been unthinkingly
assumed to be central to Design education and that that assumption needs to
be strongly supported or dropped.
Perhaps you would like to give your answers to some of them and we can see
what emerges from the dialectic?
1. Wondering on what grounds you would justify Design History having
the central role it has assumed in Design education (in the Art and design
realms)?
2. Do you envisage Design History always having such a central role?
Why?
3. What purpose(s) does Design History serve in Design education?
4. Which aspects of Design education are simply incidentally taught via
Design History?
5. What of them could be taught in other ways?
6. Could a Design education curricula without any Design History
courses be better? If so why? If not, why not?
7. What are the adverse effects on the process of individuals' Design
education professional formation from the current emphasis on Design
History?
You might ask what the basis is for my concern about Design History? My
concern is with the high level of unrecognised design failures and poor
design outcomes. From experience there is a weakness in Design education in
the skills of reasoning and an unhelpful over-obsession with artifacts
rather than results of designed artifacts. Both contribute to poor design
outcomes and both seem to be connected to the way that Design education has
been influenced by the role of Design History in Design education and the
shaping of the culture and practices of designers and design educators and
researchers.
I was interested to see you describing me as a 'scholar'. I've been a
designer, researcher, analyst, manager, entrepreneur, doctoral supervisor
and occasional educator of designers. - but 'scholar' no!
Best wishes,
Terence
==
Dr Terence Love
Mob: +61 (0) 434975 848
[log in to unmask]
===
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Victor
Margolin
Sent: Thursday, 23 August 2012 8:18 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Design History
Dear Terry:
I am not sure that your latest screed against design history is simply a
provocative challenge to engage in a debate or whether it is a deeply held
value of yours. I suspect the latter because you have gone to considerable
effort to delineate it and demonstrate the irrelevance of history to any
number of fields. The first thing I can say is that this is a highly
irresponsible position for a senior scholar in the design field to take,
given the considerable number of younger scholars and doctoral students on
this list. What are they to think of a senior scholar espousing such a
poorly thought out and ultimately destructive position. Firstly, I can say
that I don't believe that you know much about design history. In all my
years in the field, I have never seen you at a design history conference and
I would challenge you to name five to ten well recognized studies in the
field. Given that, it seems odd that you would be so quick to dismiss
history. Second, your position sounds scientistic in that you appear to
recognize knowledge as exclusively instrumental rather than formative of a
world view. If one follows your theory farther, it would seem that it was
not useful to read literature except for pleasure rather than edification.
And incidentally, you are dead wrong about the absence of art history in art
curricula. With the exception of a few programs in visual culture, I can't
think of any that would recommend dropping art history. My biggest complaint
about your post is that you are shooting from the hip with little knowledge
to back you up? Why should any design educator take you seriously when you
are prone to make radical pronouncements with no substantial grounding? In
this world anyone can say anything but the difference between responsible
and irresponsible pronouncements does become evident. I suggest that yours
fall in the category of irresponsible.
Victor
Victor Margolin
Professor Emeritus of Design History
Department of Art History
University of Illinois, Chicago
|