An artistic renaisance...Part 2

Wow, what wonderful news. The D&T Curriculum and Planning Development Department (CPDD) of MOE have announce the news that the subject might be offered at A levels beginning from 2009. I AM definitely going to apply for it, and to be part of this new and exciting development. It will not be called D&T...I think it'll be known as Design and Applied Science. I think it is quite apt in itself. I can just imagine it, the exciting exchanges about design and how the concept of design must not work in silos and without the inlusive nature of other subject areas! How would you design for someone that is illiterate? How do you design for someone who lives in parts of the whole where a screw or screwdriver is not something that they would found in a HOmeFix store? Why do you want to design a table and chair for children who would not be able to value the tables and chairs, and who would prefer to sit on the ground? How do you sustain the products' life cyle? Why design for people who would only use the product, say...once a year? Questions, questions, questions! But what really interests me now is the whole idea that design, or rather the design process must work in unison, or must be inclusive in nature in adopting practices from the various subject areas, like geography, history, literature, sciences, and others, in order for it, and the eventual products or processes that comes out of it, to be THE solution or intended design. Not easy, considering the silo-like nature of our system, but nonetheless, it IS a good start! I do like to envision that design or, its intended study, can be among the unifying subject or subjects that educators and students alike, can use, as a model of what holistic education is all about. And when I mean holistic, it is in the fact that we are no longer working on the basis of subject-like thingy, if you know what I mean. In fact I have kind of propunded the idea that maybe, just maybe, if we can model a few schools to be run like corporations in certain aspects of it, say having the students do real projects, and where they are brokeb up into marketing, production, design, publishing, engineering, research, sales, customer and service support, finance, human resources, and many others, we might just have a school that is really preparing, and I mean, REAL preparation for the students to enter the workforce. Realistically, I can't remember the last time that I need to know what (a+b)^2 can be expanded into!? But hey, I guess this is just something that I am just floating around in my mind...perhaps when I am the Minister of Education (wishful thinking here :) ), then I can start realising this! Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!