I've been hearing this more and more these days, so I'm going to rehash the same thing hundreds before me have said regarding post-secondary education (college and university):

What do I mean by that? It means that making such a huge decision like deciding what they'll want to do career-wise could become a large burden for the rest of their life. And the thought of not choosing and the stigma associated with not knowing is scary. It's pure evil to pressure youths to choose, especially when most probably don't have the capacity to foresee their lives 5-10+ years down the line.

"Well, those that do are simply stragglers. Most people make it out fine." As Sir Ken Robinson says, they do it despite the system, not because of it. The whole notion of forcing kids to standardization seems strange. Especially since everyone is quite different. So why should the curriculum be any different? For efficiency's sake? Then are you treating kids as nothing but an object or commodity? That's as unethical as can be.

"But that's equality!" I don't believe in equality. Equality always divides. Equality is giving everyone peanuts, despite some having peanut allergies. In the end, equality crumbles apart. I believe in justice, to be accommodating to differences, so everyone can be a little happier.

"But it was always this way. Look at our parents, they turned out just fine." Yeah, but that type of reasoning exist in every generation. The landscape was completely different when our parents were our age. It's always been like that, generation to generation. Look, in the Victorian Era, most people were uneducated and could still make a living during labour. There's no way that would be the case in our parents generation, so saying that our generation should be able to do what they did is hypocrisy.

So where do I rest in this topic? I want to see the institutions burn to the ground while I happily roast chestnut in the blaze of glory. Yes, I want to see some drastic educational reformation within my lifetime. Whether by my direct action, or having others use my stuff.

So, if you ask me whether I choose society or the individual, 9 times out of 10, I would pick the individual. Let the institutions burn. Let society turn to dust. Society has no feelings. People do. Students find their passion? Good. I will support them all the way. They want to improve and become the top? I will do as much as I can to make that happen. All for the sake of raising students that respect their life (something I failed to do).

One of my assignment for MDes is to pitch a conference paper. As mentioned in my earlier post, I've said that I like to let things settle for a while before acting on it. Because of that, I've got a nice collection of different projects and topics that aged well enough to become a solid topic (whether it's already written or not). The topic for this paper? Something I hold close to my heart:

Playgrounds.

I've ranted in the earlier incarnation of this blog about the mass upgrade of the playgrounds in Toronto, as well as the unreleased rant about the incoherent structure theme at the soon-to-be-opened Mooney's Bay playground in Ottawa. Seriously, it's an eyesore, go look at it, but I guess if that's what kids want -- no. They're plain ugly. We can't let kids think that badly designed things are OK or inevitable. That's learned helplessness at the core.

Anyway. Yes. Playgrounds. Their role is to help promote physical, mental, and social well-being of children. No, seriously. How do people design for such vague things? What's the criteria for a well-designed structure vs badly designed ones? These are some of the questions I had. And from that, I thought how nice it would be to have a framework to assist in the design process. Like some sort of drivers that must be met to pass for production.  So it's the twin of safety protocols for design, but it's more educational. Or that's how I see it. If I worded it strange, don't blame me. I've only been in this whole academically scholarly side of things for a month. But that's what I want. So I'm gonna research this.

Now my background on why I want this to be a reality: there's not much available resources on designing for kids. There are some for interaction and UI/UX design, but not much (excluding anthropometrics and ergonomics) on the physical side of things. I'd like to see a manual on design for kids. I think there are some available on "organizations" such as PlaygroundIdeas.org, but you need to join it, pitch an actual product, and give out payment information before you get their resources. I don't actually have a project, and I doubt emailing them and plead to them to hand their confidential information will go that well, so I'm just gonna have to wing it with whatever sources are available. Plus, I doubt their manuals are accredited sources of information anyways.

I've just sent in an abstract to see how it goes. If it's well-received, I guess I'll have to actually do some research on them? Or not? I don't know how conference paper work. It just seems somewhat speculative.

​I guess I'll just wait and see...

As mentioned in the previous post, I hold a huge amount of respect for Sir Ken Robinson. His presentation at TED talk was so inspiring, enough to make a stubborn underachieving buffoon like myself to pursue a post-grad degree. If this isn't a testament to his beliefs, I've no idea what would be. That said, simply listening to his presentation for the umpteenth time really doesn't make me a better person. So I picked up two books to read to better understand design, creativity, and education. What better than reading a book by the man himself?

Although there are other books by Sir Ken Robinson, I felt that this one is probably the best for a start. I've gotten a few pages in, and it's pretty darn close to his presentation. Seeing that it's a 250+ book, I'm expecting it to go further in depth with the concepts he talked about. It'll be great resource for grabbing sources. I will probably do a small critical review of the book after I read it.

That said, I wanted something that has a more design-oriented view of education rather than an education-oriented view on creativity. So my second book I picked up was this one:

The Third Teacher is a book (more like an anthology) full of different factors of design that contribute to increasing the learning (and health) potential for kids. It's a book by Bruce Mau Design, VS Furniture, and Cannon Design group, and dissects every facet of design ranging from interior to architecture, to industrial and product design. It covers topics ranging from health, environment, and community. It's pretty much a bible for the thing I'm doing at Masters program. Although the layout is a little jarring at first (the title page for the chapter is on the opposite side), it's still one of the finest resource book I've picked up in a while. I would recommend it for anyone that want to go into something related to design for education, but don't really know what's out there.

​I'm stoked about finding the area I want to research (design, creativity, education is still a broad subject), and going head-first in this. I have a feeling I will love doing this.

Although... Truth be told, I'm beginning to think that maybe I'm not cut out to do research at the Masters level. Compared to other classmate, I feel... dull. I can't seem to process information as well as I remembered in the past. It's probably the lingering effect of the past year, or maybe it's something else. I'm just afraid of lagging behind others if I allow this to persist.

And thus, I picked up a personal project -- like I said I would. I will try to document it to the best of my abilities and update often (I'll churn out a schedule, I promise).

But here's a small teaser:

Is it a game? Is it an animation? You don't know. I don't know (i actually do). But I'm not telling until I've got enough to vomit a post for the blog.

Though I've gotta get some stuff done before I get the time to work on this project. Since I won a competition and the final product is due in a month and a bit, I'll quickly produce the design. I'll update once the site updates. But here, check out my bio on their page <CLICK ON MY FACE>

This is Sir Ken Robinson's famous video that garnered close to 11 million views (as of October 2016) and over 40 million on the TED website. And it's the concept that fuelled me into pursuing a Master's education.

Basically, he talks about the traditional education system being obsolete, and the idea of producing students in a mass-production format to be terrifying. He argues that factory production mentality may have worked during the industrial revolution up to WWII, but the modern world cannot afford to produce people in a cookie-cutter format. He talks about how creativity is considered irrelevant, an how schools are pushing for STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and creates a hierarchy that places the arts and philosophy at the bottom rung of the academic ladder. He explains that creatives that become successful out of this system made it despite -- not because -- of it. This is especially alarming because society are demanding innovative creatives, while ironically, creativity is stunted early to produce those that lack the full potential to what they could be.