Subtitle: Is learning to be moral more important than learning to master a task?
In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, just outside the Liberty Tunnels, are a series of office buildings. They are block shaped units, lines of white exterior alternate with lines of black windows, the whole development carved into the side of a hill, ringed by parking lots. I remember turning to whomever I was with (fuzzy memory says my mom), saying “If they had a good art teacher, those buildings wouldn’t look like that.”
Snarky, yes, but I was seeing the valuing of cost and function above human centered values of use, aesthetics, and environment. It wasn't pretty. It spoke more to corporate needs of function, cost, and authoritative appearance rather than communal humanity. The built environment felt unfriendly, and with values that felt un-relatable if not hostile.
I also vehemently disagree that low cost and function first = bad design, that only through spending copious amounts of money can a building be a thoughtful piece of architecture. I see that concIusion coming from a lack of vision, thought, and creativity.
As a teacher, I want to teach my students that the physical environment matters. The objects we make matter. They convey our values and ethics, and the world we want to live in. And in the paraphrased words of Renny Ramakers, aesthetics do matter, even in the context of social design. Maybe even especially in this context. With morality, kindness, and humans at the center of goals, breaking assumptions about education and design is more possible.
Truth and gentle deeds
CSW Motto
The idea of kindness is one I keep returning to.
It’s not hard to see the longing for kindness as a reaction to the state of the world, as human railing against injustices.
"Remember to laugh in spite of all the darkness"-Elie Wiesel
Interactive sun rise: as the ball is raised and lowered in the air, the sun in the image responds and lowers and raises in a corresponding manner. Everyone participating and watching was focused and beaming. Is making up happy enough for design to do? (from Dutch Design Week, Philip Schutte and Random Studio)
How kindness can relate to social design is complex, but I know it is relevant. Social justice, with its sibling environmental justice, is key. The idea that designing objects is not enough, but that as designers and design educators we must work to make the world more equitable, safe, and kind is inherent to social design. This has been spoken to more and written about by many in the social design world (and beyond) more eloquent than I. This blog post is to share some of those voices.
“Liberation can’t be imposed...(it comes from the process of) caring for one another, and gaining a conscience about the self and each other’s humanity.”-Decolonizing Design
Furniture to integrate wheelchairs (seen at Dutch Design Week) by Swedish Designer Ella Westlund, for her project Be A Part Of, to help differently abled people to "exchange experiences".
Teaching and Kindness
Can our teaching, the content we teach, and power balances within and without our institutions become part of the conversation? Can we teach students to look at the structures (and yes designs) around them, and consider the following:
· Is what I am making or producing kind?
· What are the impacts of how I make it and the materials I use?
· Does it focus on human needs and impact first? Which humans?
· Is it making the world more livable, or merely making someone money in the mythical system of continuous economic growth?
· To what end?
And it can’t stop there. As teachers we need to ask:
· Is my school expanding design as a more democratic and diverse field?
· What needs to change for this to happen?
· How does this fit into history, our world now?
Here are some recent readings and listenings that have nudged my brain in this direction, and some of my main takeaways from each.
Design and Truth by Robert Grudin
(COMING SOON)
Decolonising Design Education: Ontologies, Strategies, Urgencies by Decolonising Design (from Extra Curricular)
· We need to redefine that which is considered craft, non-design, or tradition (i.e. the designed world does not just come from western academies)
· The concept of Mundo donde quepan muchos mundos (from Zapatistas, the idea of “creating a world where many worlds fit”, which rejects the idea of the universal for plurality)
· Designing can focus on ideas of plurality.
· “Liberation can’t be imposed...(it comes from the process of) caring for one another, and gaining a conscience about the self and each other’s humanity.” For me, this relates to the tenet of true collaboration, not designing to fix someone’s life from outside. The design process as a conversation based on equal power dynamics (see the Ella Westlund piece above); but also so much more.
· Giving the power of educating (and designing) back to the students.
(this connects to French’s Principles*, see below)
Infrequently Asked Questions by Evening Class (also from Extra Curricular)
A sampling of the questions they propose:
Is it (education) primarily about education?
Is it accessible?
Is it based on trust?
At what point would you be selling out?
How do you accommodate different views within the group?
Can you pass on the structure to others?
Are you becoming the new establishment?
Is it frustrating or unsuccessful when only a few people attend a public event you have organized?
How would you decide to end it?
These are just a few of their questions that made me think of teaching at CSW. They are asked in the context of a self-organized alternative school in London, but I think are good questions to ask (maybe even more importantly) at any traditional school. How would Harvard answer these? What could Harvard (all schools really) learn from taking these questions seriously? How would we answer them at CSW?
I went to see a show at the ICA about the history of and work from Black Mountain College, an alternative progressive college establish in North Carolina from 1933 to 1957. It was specific to the time, place, and people who made it. Many of BMC’s faculty came from the Bauhaus in Germany, having fled Nazi Germany who were not tolerant of the progressive values of the Bauhaus. They brought these values to Black Mountain College.
I remember thinking how sad it was that it didn’t exist anymore. But maybe it didn’t need to last forever or become more institutionalized to be significant. Maybe it was more important that it exist when it did, if only for a while.
How can one teach specifically to one’s time and place, to address the plurality of that moment and those students? Universality might be easier to teach to, but obviously there is a loss.
What is particular to this time and place for my students?
There is always something you can contribute – even if it's just your protest.- Elie Wiesel
Mariangela Beccoi's Lexicon of Everyday Exception - a collection of objects associated with protests around the world.
Elie Wiesel as an educator
This was on NPR on just the right day for me, a much-needed antidote (maybe that is too strong, a small to medium sized shield may be more accurate). The idea that teaching is a moral act and has moral implications resonates with me.
Ten Commandments of Elie Wiesel
By Ariel Burger
1. Listen to a witness to become a witness. 2. Don't kill the dead again by forgetting them. 3. Enter madness if necessary to awaken sleeping communities. 4. Don't let the enemy define you. 5. Any one life is worth more than all that's been written about life. 6. True prophets don't comfort; they disturb. 7. Remember to laugh in spite of all the darkness. 8. There is always something you can contribute – even if it's just your protest. 9. Worship God by arguing with God. 10. Sometimes there is no meaning. But then we must make meaning.
Questions this leaves me with:
What is the right place, time, and content for my students? How do I make a class of this time and place in history?
How do I include elements of moral literacy and responsibility in designing and art (surely possible, just what are the ways?)
How is this received by a student population more and more fixated on grades?
Plurality: introduce this idea that all art or design doesn’t have to be universal (And that universal is a myth, as it usually meant western and colonizing)
How do we critique the designed world around us keeping these ideas in mind? And what impact have those designs had on our culture and psyches?
How does the student bring the lessons of the designed environment (that which they’ve been subjugated to) into their own future creations?
*Addendum:
Sherrill Bounell, the Assistant to the Head at CSW, has been researching the school’s history and sharing it with the community. John French was a former head of the Cambridge School of Weston, and a proponent of progressive education. Sherrill shared his principles with us this fall, and it resonated with me in how human centered it is. It relates to why I think CSW is a perfect place to study human centered a.k.a. social design.
French'sPrinciples
• The school exists for the child -not the child for the school.
• The child is a total developing personality -not a disembodied intellect.
• The chief function of the teacher is guidance, based upon thorough knowledge of the individual pupil.
• No two children can safely be assumed to be alike in their interests, capacities or educational needs.
• The best guarantee of intellectual achievement is interest, which conveys its own reward.
• The only enduring discipline is self-discipline; and the only education worth the name is self-education.
• Children are not adults; the process by which ultimate self-control is acquired is a growth, not a jump.
• The virtues of responsible citizenship can best be learned by practice in responsible living.
• Every school experience should contribute to steady growth in capacity for self-direction, and in attitudes and habits of social responsibility.
Links
Extra-Curricular
Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom
Decolonising Design
Evening Class
Design and Truth, by Robert Grudin
Black Mountain College Museum
Social Design Insights Podcast
The Social Design Insights podcast by the Curry Stone Foundation speaks in depth to our design institutions and how to move them away from a European beaux arts model to one which fits our times (post modern, post colonial, and reckoning with both). It has been inspiring to listen to, and includes so many thoughtful conversations, resources, examples of innovation, and exciting projects from all over the globe, from academia to more grass roots. It includes so much more than I can address here, and I encourage you to give a listen.
The Moral Bucket List, by David Brooks
Sun by Philip Schutte and Random Studio
https://vimeo.com/212766197
Ella Westlund
https://ellawestlund.com/projects/be-a-part-of
Mariangela Beccoi
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