Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness… The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. - Paulo Freire
A Freirean piece that I wrote for the Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching was published earlier this year. Working on this piece brought me back to the year 2006 when I first encountered Paulo Freire and wrote about him for my assignment. I ransacked my backup hard drive, pulled out the paper, and read it again for the first time in 15 years. I was shocked that its contemporaneity persevered, sans some antiquated examples of technology such as the iPod and "internet". Replacing them with "smartphone" and "social media" respectively would just about make the paper new again. I'm of the opinion that this is due more to the persistent relevance of Freire than my counterfeit wisdom.
I reproduce an abbreviated version below and have decided to keep the citations and references. For the new article, click here.
A Freirean Design for the Future?
We live in a designed and technological world. Design and technology is value-laden, political and usually has a significant impact on society; while social changes in turn influence the way products are designed and technology developed.
The purpose of this paper is to study the implications values and socio-political factors have on design and technology education in this material culture. It argues that the vocation of design education is emancipation, particularly from consumersim, which has prescribed a “fear of freedom” (Freire, 1970) on a newly oppressed. It will go on to proffer Freirean pedagogy as a way of reclaiming a language for the design student and teacher to engage in critical dialogue so as to desocialise the students from their learned passivity and anti-intellectualism (Shor, 1992).
According to Morello (2000, p. 35-36), design is the “main factor whereby technologies are humanised”; while, “no technology on its own is capable of determining complete innovations...” Hence, the terms design and technology will be treated as synonymous and used interchangeably in this paper since they almost never occur in isolation from each other.
Design (and technology) is the world we live in
Design (and technology) is the world we live in. Archer (1991, p. 7) christened technology “a sine qua non of the progress of a civilisation”. Apart from nature, the world that we live in is designed and made by man. From the chopsticks or knife and fork with which we eat, to the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, technology has reached extensively into our lives; so much so that the prevalence of technology has made it increasingly difficult to conclude with any certainty as to whether technology is the cause or effect of social change. Indeed, technology has penetrated so deeply into the social structure that it has itself become the structure and a norm of action; ushering in a “technological form of social life” (Bohme, 1992, quoted in Pavlova, 2005, p. 204)
Dialectical co-evolution of design and society?
Adapting Assoc. Prof. Stephen Chan’s argument on epistemology to the context of the relationship between design and society, a dialectical co-evolution is plausibly more representative of what goes on in reality.
The way we know, the way of knowledge is always interactive, bilateral and dialectical. Always. Why? I don’t know. But that is the problem. First, we are never actively creating the world because the world is there. Secondly, we are never passively receiving the world, receiving the impressions. Then what? Well, we are dialectically knowing the world. - Stephen Chan, 2002, (audio recording)
Technology changes society – turn that crap down!
Technology has changed immensely, diversely and quickly in recent times; from the typewriter to the word-processor, or the gramophone to the walkman to the iPod; and with it, societies have changed immensely and diversely as well.
When concerts were the only form of music entertainment, the evenings out at the music halls were social events. The gramophone took that to the comfort, but constraint, of the family living hall, hence changing social interaction and familial habits. The high-fidelity sound systems made music loud, while the walkman made it personal. Then the iPod became a status symbol, and made the music experience social once again, but for a dramatically different reason; a technological social life perhaps? For sure though, no parents will be yelling “Turn that crap down!” ever again?
Burke (1972, as quoted in Gradwell, 1999, p. 250) grimly observed that “a tragedy of modern life is that the experience of the father is of little use to his children.” Perhaps a tad overstated but sobering nonetheless. Technological advance cannot be left unchecked and it is important to understand the processes and implications of change. This is especially so as the leaps and bounds of technology almost always outpace society’s (and individual’s) belief and value systems.
Technological progression and its adoption in society should be examined and it can be using Gradwell’s three-step framework. He termed the three stages: Eureka (invention), Spaghetti (participation) and Blackbox (automation).
Eureka refers to the initial euphoria and excitement of a new invention or product.
Spaghetti is the second stage where manufacturers and consumers are trying out various alternatives and modifications, searching for a form for the new invention or product that will be accepted by many people. Gradwell called this stage Spaghetti because today’s electronic devices can be wired to many others.
Blackbox is the stage where technology becomes such an integral part of our culture that it becomes invisible. Case in point would be the automated teller machine. We have already stopped noticing it yet can no longer do without it.
(Gradwell, 1999, p. 255)
Hence, in all probability, there are only two windows of opportunity to influence and direct the progression of technology – at the stages of Eureka and Spaghetti. Once the invention advances into the Blackbox stage, there is no turning back, as was the case with the automated teller machine. Amazingly, while we exercise the democratic vote to elect our governments, we never did cast a vote for nor against the automated teller machine (Gradwell, 1999, p. 252); neither were we consulted. It was a “good” decided on our behalf and bestowed upon us. Consumers at present possess close to no control of technology because they have gradually withdrawn from the process of technological decision-making. They undemocratically relinquish their need to understand and right to choose, in return for promised efficiency and convenience.
Social change points the design direction – the world as we do not know it now
Morello (2000, p. 35) defined design as “the competent, aware, and creative conception of the goods and services that constitute what we call the ‘material culture’”.
Competent. Here, Morello refers to a new “in-depth knowledge that is constantly updated” that is needed to deal with the increased interconnectedness and profundity in rapidly changing markets, technologies and consumers.
Aware. The advantages of an appropriate design or the direct or indirect harm caused by a careless design calls for the designer to look beyond the immediate context. The designer has to be aware of the impact of his or her design and have a “sense of responsibility towards the future”.
Creative. Creativity promotes diversity which is a value in itself; be it an advantageous quality being adopted by many or a resistance against change that preserves the diversity of the different cultures. Hence creativity “respects the principles of the freedom of choice and of competition”.
Without purporting to dilute or oversimplify the message, Morello’s definition may be summarised as design’s need to be sensitive to social change and the challenges it poses, in addition to being abreast if not on top of those changes. Pavlova (2005, p. 200) succinctly stated that “technology is a social phenomena, thus it cannot ignore social change.”
One of those changes that particularly affects designers would be the apparent subsuming of cognition and morality under the realm of aesthetics. According to Pavlova (2005, p. 203), “the aesthetically spaced world is the mosaic of experiences, of novel experiences, and more intense experiences than before”. The reduced role of cognition and epistemology, in favour of an experiential understanding of nature and society, may be traced to the shift in understanding things in terms of “life” as opposed to “classification” (Foucault, 1966). This seemingly innocuous modern turn, which began in the 18th century, displaced man from the pedestal of being an objective provider of explanation, to being amongst things and to sense things. We arrive at knowledge “not through the abstraction of judgment, but through the immediacy of experience” (Lash, 2001, p. 106). Hence, we find ourselves no longer above things but in the world with things – things that are designed and made by man. Ironically, this modern development paved the way for the advent of postmodernity and the ensuing deconstructive process.
The experiential way to knowledge is reinforced over and against a cognitive epistemology in the information technology world (wide web). Dreyfus (1998) argued that Kierkegaard’s barrage on the press can be extrapolated to the situation with the internet today. Adapting Kierkegaard’s three-stage answer to the problem of anonymity and disengagement – that meaningful learning has to pass through all three realms of aesthetics, ethics and religion – Dreyfuss concluded that the distinction between that which is important and the trivial has been eroded by the proliferation of the use of the internet, realising Kierkegaard’s fears. The internet has successfully mass-distributed important and unimportant information alongside each other, thereby desituating the information. This renders the curious reader an “anonymous, detached spectator” (Dreyfuss, 1998, p. 114).
With this change, people have become vulnerable to the incessant marketing efforts of consumerism, which is aimed at cultivating their desire for more things, so as to collect more experiences. Consequently, work ethics is fast disappearing because people are no longer regarded by their work but rather by the products they consume; society members are being engaged as consumers instead of producers (Pavlova, 2005). Thus, the iPod and designer clothes doth maketh the man and his identity is built upon the advertiser’s images.
Consumers are guided now by aesthetic interests and not ethical ones… If ethics accord supreme value to duty well done, aesthetics put a premium on sublime experience. - Margarita Pavlova, 2005, p. 204
The Memphis Group of designers shared a philosophy that was very much in tune with this existential and experiential interpretation of “life”. Place and time: Arc’74 showroom, Milan, 18 September 1981. The Ettore Sottsass-led Memphis group released their collection to shock and disgust from the rationalistic, modern design fraternity. Memphis’ riotous use of colours and forms had broken all modernist doctrines of “good” design (Design Museum Collection, online). Sottsass summed up Memphis’ ethos very nicely:
It is no coincidence that the people who work for Memphis don’t pursue a metaphysic aesthetic idea or an absolute of any kind, much less eternity. Today everything one does is consumed. It is dedicated to life, not to eternity. - Ettore Sottsass
This philosophy supersedes the other possibility of a cognitive epistemology abstracted by the objective man. We, therefore, no longer know the world as it is now. While the Memphis group was noble in its rejection of the modernistic absolute and perhaps a forerunner in championing the aesthetic experience, much of today’s commercial design is simply directed by this social change to perpetuate the baiting of consumers with aesthetic allure.
Design is value-laden and political - a new dehumanised oppressed
This shift in the epistemic climate and the designers’ role in it may have negated Morello’s assertion that design is the main factor for the humanisation of technology. Far from humanising technology, designers have instead turned oppressors; feeding consumerism’s frenzy with an ever growing number of products which banter to the desires of people. These desires are in turn cultivated by meticulous marketing and advertising, all working in tandem for the improved bottom lines of companies. Indeed, some believe that design is a necessity, not luxury, for businesses to stand out against their competitors (Lorenz, 1986; Kirkpatrick, 2006). I contend that commercial attempts to closely link social standing with their advertised symbols of success coerce the people into submitting to the culture of consumerism. I believe that the persistent pressure to keep up with the latest trend or else risk scorn and ridicule, is really a new Freirean “fear of freedom” that is “prescribed” to the entire present socio-cultural space and into the consciousness of just about everybody.
Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness… The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. - Paulo Freire, 1970, p. 47
Consequently, the marketers, advertisers, designers (oppressors) and consumers (oppressed) are dehumanised in the process. According to Freirean philosophy, dehumanising forces are found in both material and psychic conditions (Glass, 2001), the unique position that design finds itself in as embodiment of both ambits. Are design practitioners (professionals, teachers and students) able to reclaim an understanding of the world through being aware of their “responsibility towards the future” (Morello, 2000, p. 35)?
Increasingly, the politics concerned have become more acute as decisions are being made by few for many, affirming the latent oppressive trait of design and technology.
technology bears the social ‘imprint’ of its authors... there is always a range of possibilities or alternatives that are delimited over time – as some are selected and others denied – by the social choices of those with the power to choose, choices which reflect their intentions, ideology, social positions and relations with other people in society. - Noble, 1979, quoted in Layton, 1992, p. 9
Morello’s definition of design already alluded to its value-laden and political nature. Many others have also conceded that design and technology is devoid of neutrality (Layton, 1992; Gradwell, 1999; Petrina, 2000). It is not possible to desituate design from its socio-cultural context, though some have tried to bury it deep and suppressed from consciousness, claiming neutrality for the subject. However, technology is a human activity, and thus with it the presence of our beliefs, values and attitudes (Martin, 2002).
Freire as design's criticality
Freire conceived his philosophy of education as an ontological practice of freedom (Glass, 2001). Central to this philosophy is a praxis – a “true word” within which we can find reflection and action, as the defining feature of humanity. And therefore, “to speak a true word is to transform the world” (Freire, 1970, p. 87). Conversely, implicit in the banking method is an assumed dichotomic relationship between human beings and the world (Freire, 1970). It ignores that “the way of knowledge is always interactive, bilateral and dialectical” (Chan, 2002) and renders the individual a passive spectator who is in the world but not with the world (Freire, 1970), a point similar to Lash’s (2001) about consumerism reducing us to being with things but not above things. Freire warned that this passivity accepts deposits indiscriminately.
This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects (desk, books, coffee cup) which surround me are simply accessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of them, but they are not inside me. - Freire, 1970, p. 76
While Freire’s call to be with the world and not merely in it is critical and necessary for the individual to rise above the material culture, I contend that he has grossly underestimated the immensity and diversity of design and technology; along with “objects” or products in general. As discussed earlier, the world we live in is, apart from nature, essentially designed and technological. Design and technology is about designing and subsequently making things. Things aimed at satisfying the desires cultivated by marketing. Marketing and advertising that portray the wonderful experiences of owning the products. Existential experiences that now point the way to knowledge. Hence, the people’s consumerist intent is deeply ingrained as is their cultivated lust for things. In the face of this neo-liberal wave, design’s innate socio-cultural and emotional attributes both posit it in the unique position as the mediator between experience and product, society and values; thereby emancipating the consumer from the very material culture that he is trapped in, to stamp the neo-liberal tide.
Just as Freire stressed that only the oppressed are truly capable of emancipating the oppressed and the oppressor, only design can undo the dehumanisation brought about by consumerism because it is situated across both the material and psychic conditions. A good design will liberate by satisfying the material needs of the people without succumbing them. Design educators then find themselves in the unique position as mediators between a school design programme and real-life practices. Criticality in the students can be fostered through teacher-student co-investigation through “problem-posing” (Freire, 1970, p. 80; Shor, 1992); a method which finds great convergence with design educators who advocate the need of the context of authentic design problems to frame meaningful learning (Renwick, 2004).
The approach to this co-investigation is dialogic. The onus really is on the teacher to identify the link between learning and social transformation, provide the conditions for fostering the students’ criticality and perhaps most importantly, reclaim the role as a dialectical “oppositional intellectual – rather than as dutiful technician...” (Giroux, 2003, p. 7). However, “within the prevailing discourse of neo-liberalism... there is no vocabulary for political or social transformation...” (Giroux, 2003, p. 8). Teachers steep in the banking method and/or are utilitarian find dialogue difficult because they are without a vocabulary. Freire’s language of freedom and social equity provides the required language and it can assume the role of the pedagogical anchor for the design classroom. This language of emancipation can provide the vocabulary for the design educator to dialogue with the pupils regarding social equity and power relations issues in their chosen design situations. The teacher can and must master this language by first recognising the power relations in his own classroom.
References:
Archer, B. (1991). The Nature of Research Into Design and Design Education. Keynote address given to DATER91, the 4th National Conference on Design and Technology Education Research and Curriculum Development at Loughborough University of Technology, 5 September, United Kingdom.
Bohme, G. (1992). The Techno-Structures of Society. In N. Stehr & R. V. Ericson (eds), The Culture and the Power of Knowledge: Inquiries into Contemporary Societies, p. 39 (quoted in Pavlova, M. (2005). Social Change: How Should Technology Education Respond? International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 15(3), pp. 199-215).
Burke, J. (1972). The New Technology and Human Values, p. 187 (quoted in Gradwell, J.B. (1999). The Immensity of Technology... and the Role of the Individual. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 9(3), pp. 241-267).
Chan, S.T. (2002). Christian Faith and Postmodernism. Recording of the lecture at the Reformed Institute for Christianity and 21st Century: Asian Program, Singapore.
Design Museum Collection. Memphis. Product + Furniture Designers (1981-1985). (online: http://www.designmuseum.org/design/memphis)
Dreyfus, H.L. (1998). Education on the Internet: Anonymity vs. Commitment. The Internet and Higher Education, 1(2), pp. 113-124.
Foucault, M. (1966). The Order of Things. London / New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York / London: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Giroux, H.A. (2003). Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Resistance: Notes on a critical theory of educational struggle. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), pp. 5-16.
Glass, R.D. (2001). On Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Praxis and the Foundations of Liberation Education. Educational Researcher, 30(2), pp. 15-25.
Gradwell, J.B. (1999). The Immensity of Technology... and the Role of the Individual. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 9(3), pp. 241-267.
Kirkpatrick, D. (2006). Dell in the Penalty Box. Fortune, 154(5), pp. 28-36.
Lash, S. (2001). Technological Forms of Life. Theory, Culture & Society, 18(1), pp. 105-120.
Layton, D. (1992). Values and Design & Technology. Text of keynote lecture at the International Conference on Design and Technology Educational Research and Curriculum Development at Loughborough University of Technology, 04 September, United Kingdom.
Lorenz, C. (1986). The Design Dimension: The New Competitive Weapon for Business. Oxford / New York: Basil Blackwell.
Martin, M. (2002). Values and Attitudes in Design and Technology. In S. Sayers, J. Morley & B. Barnes (eds), Issues in Design and Technology Teaching, pp. 208-223. London / New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Morello, A. (2000). Design Predicts the Future When It Anticipates Experience. Design Issues, 16(3), pp. 35-44.
Noble, D. (1979). Social Choice in Machine Design: the Case of Automatically Controlled Machine Tools. In A. Zimbalist (ed), Case Studies on the Labour Process, pp. 18-19 (quoted in Layton, D. (1992). Values and Design & Technology. Text of keynote lecture at the International Conference on Design and Technology Educational Research and Curriculum Development at Loughborough University of Technology, 04 September, United Kingdom).
Pavlova, M. (2005). Social Change: How Should Technology Education Respond? International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 15(3), pp. 199-215.
Petrina, S. (2000). The Politics of Technological Literacy. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 10(2), pp. 181-206.
Renwick, P. (2004). Teaching and Evaluating the Problem Solving Process. In H.F. Wong, P. Renwick, J. Tan & C.M. Yau (eds), Starting to Teach Design & Technology: a helpful guide for beginning teachers, pp. 3-12. Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Shor, I. (1992). Education is Politics: Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy. In P. McLaren & P. Leonard (eds), Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter, pp. 25-35. New York : Routledge.
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