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Dear Keith Wonderful observations. I have always been fascinated while watching children play and Lego has been an all time favorite for me. I did set an assignment for my class in furniture design many years ago where the students analysed Lego from the systems prespective to appreciate the many levels at which they work. I am sorry to see that Lego is loosing market share and have had to discontinue the large quatro blocks. When Lego crossed their 50th year in January 2008 I had posted on my blog "Design for India", a note on my thoughts and insights from Lego and the way we had used it for design education assignments here in India. < http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/01/lego-toy-for-all-ages-can-it-be.html > The second part of your observation is on how human children seem to very quickly loose their ability to experiment and learn to play by the rules, a poor setting for the sustained use of design thinking within our education systems. Here too there are opportunities to look at the content and delivery of formal and non-formal education in our society and design has a huge role to play here. In India we have been facing a sort of crisis in design education which too has reached the 50 year landmark with the setting up of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabd in 1961 which is celebrating its 50th year this year based on a report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958. The Government of India had announced a National Design Policy in 2007 and this year they came forward with a proposal to set up four new NID's. However the manner in which these were being proposed led to some of the NID's alumni to express their concern and a form of democratic design activism has taken root here with the formation of a group calling for "Vision First" as a way forward. Vision First is a movement and a volunteer action group that is calling for a rethink of design education as well as a broader call to look at the manner in which design is located and used with in government action across all its ministries. You can see more about this initiative here on the Vision First blog that is mapping the unfolding thoughts and action here in India. <http://visionfirst.in/> Last week I was in Amsterdam to deliver a keynote at the conference "What Design Can Do" that I titled "Nature of Design: The Need for Nurture in India Today". The definition of design is expanding and design education, research and use of design by government and industry all need to be reviewed and taken to new levels of integration into our way of doing things here. My paper and presentation can be downloaded from my blog from this link here as a 2.3 mb zip file in pdf. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/rlmjp1> We are proposing a series of regional round table meetings here in India followed buy an International conference that could bring many diverse stakeholders for design thought and action to the table so that we could explore the new directions that design education can take in the days and years ahead. I am hoping that this list too would join in these deliberations in the days ahead and that we can draw considerable benefits of insights from members of this list as well. The problems taht we are facing here in India may not be unique and other countries too may be facing similar challenges and I will be happy to hear about initiatives and ideas from list members on the directions that design education would need to take in the future. I and my colleagues on the Vision First group look forward to suggestions and discussions from the list. With warm regards M P Ranjan from my imac at home on the NID campus 6 June 2011 at 11.05 am IST ------------------------------------------------------------- *Prof M P Ranjan* *Design Thinker and author of blog - www.Designforindia.com<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/> * E8 Faculty Housing National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 email: ranjanmp@g <[log in to unmask]>mail.com <[log in to unmask]>web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp>web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in <http://www.ranjanmp.in/>blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com> education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com> education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com <http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com/> ------------------------------------------------------------ On 6 June 2011 09:14, Keith Russell <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Watching my three year-old grandson playing with his quatro lego (four > times normal size - discontinued) I noticed how free he was of the > "rules of lego". That is, he tried impossible things. More > interestingly, he worked in ways that don't sit all that well with the > structure. For example, he changed his mind about the base frequently - > this lead to a few crashes and it led to him working upside-down. His > upside-down work reminded me of accounts of the process of Gaudi on > turning models for the Sagrada Família upside-down to see how gravity > worked. My grandson wasn't looking for gravity but he also wasn't > trapped into the presumed logic of the blocks. > > Soon he will forget this freedom. > > Keith Russell > > OZ Newcastle >