Which Way for Education? Ian Frank ianf@fun.ac.jp

Which Way for Education?

Ian Frankianf@fun.ac.jp

A Real-World Test

beer-drinker coke-drinker 25 year old 16 year old

Rule: “If someone is drinking beer, they must be 18 or over”

Imagine you are a bouncer in a night club

A Logic Test

D F 3 7

Rule: “If there is a letter D on one side, the number on the other side is 3”

These cards all have a letter on one side and a number on the other

The Real World

• We are evolved to deal with the real world.• Question: Does exposure to traditional

education systems really prepare students for decision-making in the real world?

Where Did This Talk Come From?

Logo

Right

IMG_3932.JPG

Right

Wrong

Chinese Character Test

Wayfinding

“When an individual first enters an environment (whether digital or natural) the individual engages in a three part process which leads towards their cognitive understanding of that space.”1.Interpretation2.Decision Making3.Wayfinding and Visual Mapping

Information Anxiety

“Order is no guarantee of understanding. Sometimes just the opposite is true… Cities don’t come in chapters with restaurants in one section and museums in another; their order is organic, sometimes confusing, never alphabetic. To really experience a city fully, you have to acknowledge confusion.” Richard Saul

Wurman (1935-)

Revised Question

•New Question: Does exposure to traditional education systems really prepare students to “acknowledge the confusion” of the real world: interpretation, decision-making, wayfinding?

Recommended Reading

Recommended Viewing

Design a New Perfume Brand

• Branding• Market Research• Make video• Design actual bottle• Make Pitch

Start a Junk Disposal Business

One Dashiki, no specification

An Interpretation

Real world wayfinding.

•Identification of misfit of form•Artificial restraints •“Connector”-based

Matching Buttons“Suppose we are given a button to match, from among a box of assorted buttons…What we do, actually, is to scan the buttons rejecting each one in which we notice some discrepancy (this one is larger, this one is darker, this one has too many holes, and so on).... It is much easier to explain the misfit of a wrong button than to justify the congruity of one which fits.”Christopher Alexander (1936 -)

Cybernetic Explanation

“[C]ybernetic explanation is always negative.” Look at the restraints.

“Learned the right path”? Or “learned to avoid the wrong paths”?Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)

IMG_1126.JPG

IdentificationIdentification DirectionalDirectional RegulatoryRegulatory OrientationOrientation DonorRecognition

DonorRecognition

Four Wayfinding Strategies

• Districts : a place is divided into meaningful zones for use on signs and maps (Ex: University of Cambridge, UK)

• Landmarks : Major nodes, like elevators or, yes, landmarks(Ex: Pope Sixtus V rebuilding ofRome, IT)

• Streets : easily recognisable corridors and pathways form a comprehensible network (Ex, New York, USA)

• Connectors : simple bold pathways that connect all destinations within one location (Ex: Forbidden City, CN)

Educational Equivalents (v1)

• Districts subjects in a syllabus

• Landmarks flagship theories (eg, relativity)

• Streets narrative concept, interdiscipline

• Connectors boundary-spanning projects

An Analogy for Education

• Name: Nakagin Capsule Tower

• Architect: Kisho Kurokawa

• Design / Construction:1970-1972

Construction

The Question Again

• Does exposure to this really prepare students to “acknowledge the confusion” of the real world: interpretation, decision-making, wayfinding?

Apprenticeship History• Stretches back to Middle Ages in UK• 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act: 12-

hour working day and a requirement that factory apprentices taught reading, writing and arithmetic.

• 240,000 apprentices by the mid 1960s, • Concerns about:– exclusivity– male-domination– focusing on serving time rather than on outcomes– failure to embrace new and expanding occupations.

Conclusions• Working in the real world is a fast educator• Does logical, compartmentalised treatment

capture this?• Analogies from design (Alexander), cybernetics

(Bateson), wayfinding (Gibson), metabolism (Kurokawa).

• The Apprentice: connector-based, decision-making, real world, imposed artificial restraints to maximise identification of misfit of both prototype form and intuitions of contestants.

• “An education like no other”. Should it be?

Espanola Way, Miami Beach