Impact of Design
Changing the system through design
The research shows very well that school offers a lot of possibilities for improvement and that learning can and should be done in different ways. But to make the public-school system more sustainable a change in society must happen. De-schooling the society, as Illich preaches, but this society depends on the people who are being schooled right now. John Holt mentions that people who become teachers either never had a problem with the system and therefore will never make a change, or are motivated to reform school but are stuck in a system which is hard to escape from. It is a circle, a wicked problem that one has to face. This is where design will have an impact. Therefore, I am going to propose some ideas that can be developed to help improving the existing system, shifting towards change, and developing a sustainable future for society and the environment. I, as a designer want to break the circle with creating something that helps to de-school the school system and through that leads to a shift in the whole society. Above mentioned advocates of revolutionizing education amongst others in the 60s and 70s have already tried to combine unschooling and schooling but apparently it didn´t show much success. As those people have mostly been educators themselves who escaped the system it is time to include design as a discipline to make a change. Looking from another perspective on education can help to see the threads and possibilities better.
