4. MEANING:
The
architectural education study, “Rites of Passage: The Making of a Professional
Architect” is a dissertation undertaken in the human science tradition. Failing
to develop a proposal to investigate architectural design due to
inaccessibility of mental data related to design, I decided to investigate how
the educational curriculum affected architects’ attitude, values and skills. The
shift was an attempt to salvage what I could from the ‘wreckage’, i.e., the
anticipated results should affect the way architects designed. To accomplish
the aims and objectives, the research was designed to interview students of
architecture design, student teaching assistants teaching part-time or
preparing design curriculum. Furthermore, department meeting minutes related to
the development of the curriculum was collected, interviews with key professors
were conducted, and invited/visiting lecturers was recorded in order to get a
good feel for the context and language. Students that did well were sought to
comment about their architectural design experiences. Student experiences were
accessed, recorded, thematized and analyzed in the grounded theory tradition.
Students
saw their experiences in negative light. They questioned the function of juries
where students work would be the focus of criticism by a group of invited faculties
and/or visiting professionals whom never saw the design solution before the meeting
The students questioned the professor’s encouragement of work and to express
oneself while reluctant to help with ideas, and the insistence on group work
when it was clear that design is very particular and personal. The results
spoke of servitude. In the dissertation the educational outcome was described
as follows,
“Central
themes that emerge from the analysis of the students’ institutional experiences
point to solitude and sham. As students continuously confront the punishing
diversity and the humiliating disregard, their previous traditions are replaced
by one that speaks of irresolution. I have found that these problematic
situations tend to develop habits about silence, pretense and concealment.
Students inhabit through silence solitude, and through pretense and concealment,
sham. They are introduced to illiteracy by solitude, to docility by sham, and
become, in their docility and illiteracy, serving dependents."[1]
The
core category in the theory was silence. The punishing diversity rendered
student silent. They would not voice their opinions; their core values were
silenced because these values did ‘not function well’. They resorted to
pretense when confronted and pressured to perform. The resulting status spoke
of ‘being lost’. They did not have the integrity or confidence to propose what
they thought or intended. Irresolution was a common theme. A leading professor
who leads the development of architectural curriculum made the point, “At one point he [professor] said, 'I don’t like dogmatism.' I
[student] exclaimed, ‘what dogmatism!’ The professor responded, ‘When people
start believing, they stop thinking,’ and continued, ‘and when people talk
about beliefs, or believing, I get nervous.’ [my brackets for clarity] The
bottom line seems to be a war against prejudice, belief and tradition.
Both John Dewey and Hanse Gadamer wrote about two concepts, namely, adaptation and prejudice that had profound implications to the meaning of professionalism. Dewey’s quote about education is chilling. "Any other adaptation would be an external thing. The slave is socially adaptable, but it is only as long as he has a master, someone who commands and perhaps threatens punishment if he is not obeyed. Any adaptation not got through the instrumentality of the child's own makeup, would be as formal and mechanical as the adaptation of a slave."[2] To Dewey, being a slave was not good enough, habits was a sought instrument of control. On the other hand, Gadamer’s quote about understanding clarified that, "Prejudices, are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something – whereby what we encounter says something to us."[3] To Gadamer, prejudice and belief seem to be a structural part of understanding without which meaning cannot emerge and wandering becomes consciousness.
William
Sargant writes about the battle for the mind. He refers to the work Wilham
Gordon paper pointing out that “the mature brain builds up systems of positive
and negative conditioned responses by which the individual adapts himself to
his environment, mostly basing his present behaviour on past experience.”[4] In essence professional education
provides ‘past experiences’ from which lessons learned set the conditions of
future professional service. Student experiences of public punishment in juries
and critiques that result in stress were instrumental. Sargant writes, “Before
being able to change behaviour patterns of thought and action in the human
brain with speed and efficiency, it is apparently in many cases necessary to
induce some sort of physiological brain disturbance. The subject may have to be
frightened, angered, frustrated, or emotionally disturbed in some way or
another, because all such reactions are likely to cause alterations in brain
function which may increase his suggestibility or make him liable to forego his
normal conditioning.”[5] Unifying objectives across
courses and semesters seem of grantee results effectively. The students
thinking are impaired and their responsive attitude entrenched. “By increasing
or prolonging stresses in various ways, or inducing physical debilitation, a
more thorough alteration of the person's thinking processes maybe achieved. The
immediate effect of such treatment is, usually, to impair judgment and increase
suggestibility; and though when the tension is removed the suggestibility
likewise diminishes, yet ideas implanted while it lasted may remain.”[6]
And
finally, Sargant stresses the importance of hope of ensuring salvation for the
religious and livelihood for the professional. He writes, “It is not enough to
disrupt previous patterns of behaviour by emotional assaults on the brain; one
must also provide an escape from the induced mental stress. Hellfire is
presented only as the result of rejecting the offer of eternal salvation won by
faith. Emotionally disrupted by this threat, and then rescued from everlasting
torment by a total change of heart, the convert is now in a state to be helped
by dwelling upon the complementary gospel of Love. The punishment for
backsliding from a state of grace must always be kept in mind; but once
conversion has taken place, love rather than further fear can be used to
consolidate the gain.”[7]
I
will not get into my experiences about undertaking a dissertation about the
same organization from which I am pursuing a Doctoral degree; the experience
turned out to be a great challenge. Never-the-less, three (3) personal
experiences during my dissertation journey were informative. The first
experience was about a cognate advisor. The advisor, who was from another
professional domain call a meeting of the advisory committee to object to the
finding. In the meeting, another advisor, a sociology of education professor, responded
indicating, “This is what we do.” The advisor stood up and walked out. The objecting
professor was either not informed about pedagogical objectives, particularly,
constructive pedagogy, being a quantitative research guru did not accept
qualitative research, or other motivations that I do not wish to speculate on.
The
second experience was when I asked the co-chair about the reasons for the
curriculum, he responded, “To ensure your livelihood.” You create a serving,
silent, responsive and adaptable character to serve well on the job. We inhabit
‘service’ to ensure a job that pays, was an eye opener. I thought that an
expert would serve a client better. Knowing what to do should be paramount.
The
third experience was in the dissertation defense when faculty declared, “that
is not what we do.” In response I reminded him that the session was recorded
with his consent! In this experience where professors refusing to declare that
they acted to achieve the declared results revealed that the system, or should
I say administration, was in control of the curriculum and its results. Gypsy
professor roam universities to ensure change and the diversity sought was in
their meeting to ‘benefit’ the student in juries and critique; professors need
not know ‘the plan’. The convert curriculum is in stealth mode.
Architecture,
being an integration of art and science and a highly personal design endeavor, implements
a variety of pedagogy approaches. Architectural students learn from their architectural
experiences in design studios (student center
learning/teaching/instruction);
they learn from researching the context of design (inquiry-based/discovery
oriented learning); they learn by presenting their solutions to design problems
(problem-based learning); they conduct group projects (collaborative learning);
they integrate functional, structural, electro-mechanical, economic, social and
environmental knowledge (integrative pedagogy); they participate in desk
reviews, critiques and juries (critical pedagogy); they work with other
students from different cultures (culturally responsive pedagogy), and receive
lectures, i.e. Socratic method. And finally, the design studio is the ultimate
‘flipped classroom’ where students spent their evenings designing and proposing
and developing their designs and end up discussing these proposals in during
course hours. Architecture education is a rich pedagogical context. Reflecting
on what all these pedagogies have in common, is interesting.
Education
is about the acquisition of knowledge, internalization of habits, and forming
identities. What justification[8], that can possibly
underpin an identity that speaks to a docile person who inhabits solitude, sham
and servitude. Before getting into possible justifications, a word about
architecture consequences: Do architects' identities influence architectural theory?
[1]
El-Faramawy, A. Rites of Passage: The Making of a Professional Architect.
University of Michigan press, Ann arbor 1987.
[2]
John Dewey, Lectures in The Philosophy Of Education, New York: Random House, p.
98
[3]
Gadamer, Hanse-George Philosophical Hermeneutics. Trans by David E. Linge.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, p. 9.
[4] Sargant, W. BATTLE FOR THE MIND: The Mechanics of Indoctrination, Brainwashing and Thought Control: by, Pelican Book, Maryland 1961, p. 38
[5]
Ibid, Sargant p.62
[6]
Ibid, Sargant p.72
[7]
Ibid, Sargant p.81-82
[8] Justification
is not used in the epistemological sense but rather as reasons for condoning.