Dear Jinan and All,
Your recent post states that I have complained about your comments on the grounds that this is a list for doctoral education, suggesting that I am complaining because you are in some respect off-topic. This is not quite so. Please let me make my view clear, and let me state that this is my view. Others may have other views.
This list is titled "PhD-Design." It was established in the wake of the first conference on doctoral education in design in Columbus, Ohio, in 1998. This list took off in earnest following the second conference on doctoral education in design in La Clusaz, France, in 2000.
The purpose of the list is to serve as a forum for discussing doctoral education, research training, and research issues. Everyone is welcome to bring up any relevant topic they wish to address. The list is not "for" someone doing a PhD in design. Rather, it is about doctoral education in design and issues relating to doctoral education in design. This began primarily "for" people who are responsible for doctoral education and research training, and it swiftly grew to include people who are themselves getting a doctorate. Anyone interested in relevant topics is a welcome subscriber.
One crucial issue for the list is that people are welcome to raise any topic they feel relevant — no one has the right to close a debate, but anyone has the right to challenge an issue. There is a second aspect to this. An issue that may well be relevant if we address it as a research topic may be irrelevant if we address the same topic as a matter of personal belief. While some of the contributions to the thread "Re: [New post] New Book Announcement: McLuhan Misunderstood: Setting the Record Straight by Robert K. Logan" have been about the subject topic in the header, other posts (in my view at least) have drifted off in two ways — first, the thread changed from anything to do with McLuhan; second, the thread drifted to a discussion of existential beliefs and a series of personal statements about the nature of cognition that were (again, in my view) quite contrary to much of what research has revealed about cognition. The same held true for earlier claims in the same thread on the nature of language and literacy, especially with respect to some claims based on references to Stephen Toulmin and Harold Innis.
In a later post, you replied clarifying a few aspects that had been unclear — this post demonstrated that Toulmin called for dialogue and new approaches to inquiry. This is true. Even so, Toulmin did not oppose language or literacy. It's rather like saying that Socrates left no writings and that he opposed literacy — based on one account in the words of Plato — and further, opposing literacy, he opposed the use of language. We don't know whether Socrates wrote. If he did, his writings have not survived. We do know that he read and that he was literate, if you credit Plato and others who reported his statements on books written by other philosophers. We also know that he used words Language and dialogue were his primary medium of interaction. This, at least, holds true for Toulmin — Toulmin advocated new approaches to inquiry, but he did not oppose language and he certainly used words and writing as a medium of inquiry.
I'm not complaining about the fact that your posts address an issue that is not specifically relevant to doctoral education. Cognition, language, literacy, and related issues are certainly important to research. I've been grumbling about the unacknowledged drift from one subject to another without a demarcation, and I've been grumbling about the way that the topic seems to float off into the realm of personal belief. Any list member has the right to state beliefs — and any other list member has the right to ask how, why, or even whether those beliefs are relevant to a research list.
Some of the statements in your commentaries seem quite interesting and I agree with them. Then you drift off to what seem to me unsupported statements of belief. The statement in the middle of your latest post is such a claim: "Just the fact that we keep waste paper basket in our living space teaches our children ‘to waste’." I can't see that this is so. It may be, but I'd need more than your unsupported claim to believe it — I observe that waste emerges in many situations, and many factors affect what becomes wasteful behaviour. One could just as well write, "the fact that we keep a recycling and waste sorting system in our living space teaches children to recycle, to compost, and to reduce waste." The problem lies in the unsupported statement, either statement, without a more careful consideration of fact, causation, association, and context.
It's much like the earlier posts in which you describe your beliefs about human nature — despite the evidence that many of your statements run counter to centuries of research on the behaviour of primates, hominids, and human beings.
At any rate, I have no objection or complaint to the issues you raise. My complaint has been more specific: a request for carefully considered statements and some relevant evidence for your beliefs. Relevant evidence is the issue -- with Toulmin, you produced statements to show that Toulmin believes many of our research traditions to be inadequate, but there was no evidence for the notion that Toulmin opposed language or literacy.
I suppose some folks will see this as too blunt a post. Perhaps so. It would be more restful to let subscribers believe that my complaint had to do with the fact that you were not writing specifically about doctoral education, but that is not the case. As one colleague said while we were talking about your posts, she thought these issues could be interesting in the right context. But she disagreed sharply with your views about language, literacy, and culture. Her disagreement was far more vehement than mine. When I asked why, she said, "I don't want my children growing up to be Neanderthals, and that's what we'd get without language, literacy, or socialisation."
Let me make a clear nuancing statement: it does not seem to me that your project with young children is raising Neanderthals. You are obviously socialising children in the context of a cultural system for which you are an advocate, and you may well be helping them to develop in a way that will help them to be better adult humans at some future point. I don't know enough from your reports to agree or disagree, though I can state that I am sympathetic to some of your aspirations.
It does seem to me that your accounts of how you do this and your accounts of principles that may or may not work are problematic accounts. My questions and complaints have had to do with the accounts and the truth claims you've made to support your views.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
Jinan wrote:
--snip--
Since Ken keeps reminding that this group is for people doing or guiding Phd in design
--snip--
Just the fact that we keep waste paper basket in our living space teaches our children ‘to waste’.
--snip--
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