RANT WARNING
The first week is over (the first full one, that is) and the thing that I don’t particularly understand is the teambuilding Tuesday “ritual” the other, I get. It’s nice to open with something like mindfulness or reflection, but teambuilding? That’s not how people get to know each-other. It feels forced, and ends up making everyone uncomfortable (and sometimes confused?). Maybe that’s the point, though. Everyone is feeling the same discomfort and empathises with one-another. I get it, I guess. I still don’t have to like it. Speaking of empathy, I find it interesting that the overall “goal” of this course is to design places for students to learn by empathising with them and meeting their needs. Clearly, what we have now is not what we are shooting for, but that is the industry norm. The big market in design isn’t exercise ball chairs and trendy standing desks, it’s white paint and square buildings. Why? Because a large portion of design is meeting the needs of people, specifically the needs of the financiers who would have to buy and maintain the above-stated ball chairs and trendy desks. They need efficiency, so we have small desks in grid pattern and windowless interior rooms (H footprints are space inefficient, after all). The big problem is that it’s cost ineffective to meet the needs of students. The even bigger problem is that the current system works. Sure, I’d be more comfortable taking notes in a la-z-boy recliner. But would it increase my test scores? Hell, no. So does anyone care? Of course not. Trendy, ergonomic, empathetic design is a cost with no return on investment, so to say that it will “bias students towards learning” is ridiculous. We already “bias them towards learning” by using the point grading system, the college admittance system, threats of discipline, and on, and on. At the end of the day, the only real way for this to increase student satisfaction and provide a ROI is to completely abandon the entirety of the established education system and substitute one based on discussion, exploration, and genuine learning. But: At the end of the day, you're dealing with over fifty million public school students, most of whom don’t actually want to be there. No matter how great Kumbaya Exploration Academy is, there’s no way that I wouldn’t rather take a day off a few times a month. So to cater to those that wouldn’t show up every weekday (most likely the vast majority), education has evolved to force-feed information to people who don’t want to hear it or couldn’t care to pay attention. End rant. Part two next week, probably. Hopefully not. Definitely pictures next week, though. Probably.
1 Comment
Garreth Heidt
9/21/2016 08:14:26 pm
Zach,
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Welcome to Design Thinking: a half-year course guided by Garreth Heidt with a focus on fixing real-world problems by observing people and the challenges they face daily.
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