Dear Terry/ Kristina/ Ann/ Chris......

Design education can not be seen in isolation. As mentioned in  Kristina s
mail the issue basically is to understand the shift from anthropocentric to
eco centrism and to have sustainable sensibility in our very being so that
our actions are sustainable and  they are not afterthoughts.
This shift is evident in all educational systems based on linear, rational
knowledge system.
My research of almost 25 years has been around human alienation, where he
lost the 'beingness' of eco centrism, sustainability and recyclability  as
the primary givens from where he acted upon the earth doing least harm.

The development of linear, rational beingness is what has distanced him
from his inner nature which is rooted in the ethics of NATURE.
We are facing one of the deepest crisis and the cause is related our
alienation. In fact this is is a cognitive crisis.
As i mentioned in an earlier post regarding destruction of cultures,
homogenization  are also to be seen in this light. Just this century has
witnessed the destruction of over 1000 languages.

I have started a very small initiative called 're imagining schools' where
I am attempting to value the natural and biological propensity to make
sense of the world by respecting the autonomy of the child.
Modern preoccupation with objectivity has eliminated the centrality of
the know-er in making sense of the world.More over this hasnt resulted in
any objective understanding of the world. Even cognitive science which is a
recent entry has many schools of thought which are basically opinions.
The shift I am trying to make is to create conducive enviornment for
children to BE so that they are free and autonomous to understand the world.
Till now we have been responding to the question 'how to teach children'
and we need to respond to 'how children learn'. The earlier belong to the
realm of psychology and that is why Skinner was the main person and the
second question belong to the realm of biology. The latest researches in
the area of cognition, neuro biology etc point to another possibility.
Child is not fed with ready made 'knowledge' but is allowed to learn and
create 'knowledge'. When you deal with ready made knowledge reasoning is
put to use to understand but when one deals with unknown reasoning has no
role. One needs to be open, observant, divergent, intuitive and allow the
self organizing ability in us to make sense for us. Very much like the way
we learned our mother tongue.

In a way less of ego and more of the know-er with in us.
This principle can be used even in higher studies but may be sufficient
unlearning and repairing of the rational cognition one is accustomed to.
One area I have been looking at is the aesthetic sensibility as at this
level lot of homogenization is taking place.

Please see the links to see some of my explorations.
Jinan
design activist, researcher, educationist India
http://reimaginingschools.wordpess.com
http://my.opera.com/jinankb/blog/sensing-nature
http://awakeningtheaestheticawareness.blogspot.com/
http://awakeningtheaestheticawareness.wordpress.com/




On 20 January 2012 08:57, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Jinan,
> What specific explicit practical changes to design education curricula are
> you suggesting?
> Many people have been 'exploring'  (w)holistic approaches and perspectives
> to design education for what is currently called 'sustainability' since
>  the
> 60s.
> The challenge seems to be in identifying exactly what is best included in
> the design educaiton curriculum. We've spent 50 years exploring, now
> perhaps
> is time for making decisions?
> One problem in this is that earlier explorers and key environmental thought
> leaders such as  Viktor Papanek, Rachel Carson, Illich and those of the
> alternative and  appropriate technologies and the green movement were
> helpful and took us a limited way. To establish design education for
> sustainability on those sources would be to lock us into the past. It is
> time to create design education that addresses the next stage rather than
> simply emulates them.
> I suggest, to do that requires first focusing on why and how those earlier
> approaches and the current 'popular' views of what is sustainable design do
> not work (there is empirical evidence that this is so). This in turn
> requires specific design education content - which is easy to specify. Next
> would require the skills (rather than simply knowledge content) to be able
> to identify counter-intuitive solutions that would work. These are
> necessarily counter-intuitive because of the previous 50 years of
> problematic  'green' conditioning. Again, it is relatively easy to specify
> design education strategies to teach counter-intuitive design thinking.
> Best wishes
> Terry
>
>
>
Jinan,
'DIGITAL MEDIUM IS A TOOL.DIGITALLY  MEDIATED KNOWLEDGE DESTROYS THE BEING'

www.re-cognition.org
www.kumbham.org
http://my.opera.com/jinankb/blog/
reimaginingschools.wordpress.com
09447121544
0487 2386723