Verbatim » learning design

education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:36:02 +0000

It has often been remarked that an educated man has probably forgotten most of the facts he acquired in school and university. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten..

B. F. Skinner, New Scientist, May 31, 1964, p. 484.

pictures and conversation

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 22:02:06 +0000

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1992 (Folio Society; originally 1865), p. 3. Illustration by John Tenniel.

adventures first, explanations later

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:48:18 +0000

And the Gryphon added ‘Come, let’s hear some of your adventures.’

‘I could tell you my adventures – beginning from this morning,’ said Alice a little timidly: ‘but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

‘Explain all that,’ said the Mock Turtle.

‘No, no! The adventures first,’ said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: ‘explanations take such a dreadful time.’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1992 (Folio Society; originally 1865), p. 91-2.

applied learning

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 16:59:12 +0000

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think – ‘ (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) ‘ – yes, that’s about the right distance – but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?’ (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1992 (Folio Society; originally 1865), p. 5.

which way from here

Shanta Rohse — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:54:52 +0000

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

‘–so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. ‘What sort of people live about here?’

‘In that direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives a Hatter: and in that direction,’ waving the other paw, ‘lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1961 (Folio Society; originally 1865), p. 56.

the mania for putting things with the same name into the same basket

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:42:10 +0000

Does a concert hall ask to be next to an opera house? Can the two feed on one another? Will anybody ever visit them both, gluttonously, in a single evening, or even buy tickets from one after going to a performance in the other? In Vienna, London, Paris, each of the performing arts has found its own place, because all are not mixed randomly. Each has created its own familiar section of the city. In Manhattan itself, Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House were not built side by side. Each found its own place, and now creates its own atmosphere. The influence of each overlaps the parts of the city which have been made unique to it.

The only reason that these functions have all been brought together in Lincoln Center is that the concept of performing art links them to one another.

But this tree, and the idea of a single hierarchy of urban cores which is its parent, do not illuminate the relations between art and city life. They are merely born of the mania every simple-minded person has for putting things with the same name into the same basket.

Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree, Architectural Form, April 1965, p. 61.

separation of play from everything else

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:29:17 +0000

Another·favourite concept of the CIAM theorists and others is the separation of recreation from everything else. This has crystallized in our real cities in the form of playgrounds. The playground, asphalted and fenced in, is nothing but a pictorial acknowledgment of the fact that ‘play’ exists as an isolated concept in our minds. It has nothing to do with the life of play itself. Few self-respecting children will even play in a playground.

Play itself, the play that children practise, goes on somewhere different every day. One day it may be indoors, another day in a friendly gas station, another day down by the river, another day in a derelict building, another day on a construction site which has been abandoned for the weekend. Each of these play activities, and the objects it requires, forms a system. It is not true that these systems exist in isolation, cut off from the other systems of the city. The different systems overlap one another, and they overlap many other systems besides. The units, the physical places recognized as play places, must do the same.

Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree, Architectural Form, April 1965, p. 61.

quality without a name (qwan)

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 22:08:15 +0000

The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise. Words fail to capture it because it is more precise than any word. The quality itself is sharp, exact, with no looseness in it whatsoever. But each word you chose to capture it has fuzzy edges and extensions which blur the central meaning of the quality.

Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, 1979, p. 29, and his enigmatic proposal that well-designed buildings and town must exhibit “the quality without a name.”

learning cannot be designed

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 11:43:21 +0000

Learning cannot be designed. Ultimately, it belongs to the realm of experience and practice. It follows the negotiation of meaning; it moves on its own terms. It slips through the cracks; it creates its own cracks. Learning happens, design or no design. And yet there are few more urgent tasks than to design social infrastructures that foster learning…Those who can understand the informal yet structured, experiential yet social, character of learning and can translate their insight into designs in the service of learning will be the architects of our tomorrow.

Etienne Wenger, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, 1998, p. 225

enquire within

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 20:14:25 +0000

Whether you wish to model a flower in wax; to study the rules of etiquette; to serve relish for breakfast or supper; to plan a dinner for a large party or a small one; to cure a headache; to make a will; to get married; to bury a relative; whatever you may wish to do, make, or to enjoy, provided your desire has relation to the necessities of domestic life, I hope you will not fail to ‘Enquire Within.’ – Editor.

Anonymous, Enquire Within Upon Everything, 1884, the great Victoria guidebook