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0. Epilogue

Author: DR. ALI EL-FARAMAWY Affiliation: PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE, AIN SHAMS UNIVERSITY, EGYPT MOTIVATION: If you are you a school or university teaching staff and do not have educational qualifications, the following presents an education crash course that explains what are education results, how are these results are achieved, and why and to whom are these results important. At the end you will be able to answer the fundamental six education questions: 1. Educators talk about understanding not memorizing, what will students understand? 2. Educators talk about social construction of reality, what are the values embedded in education? 3. Educators talk about economic development, how will education help develop the economy? 4. Educators talk about international education, how does education serve different fundamental values of diverse cultures? 5. Educators talk about curriculum, why is education policy, aims and objectives so hard to grasp? 6. Educators talk about education, why are...
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1. ABSTRACT

  There is no escaping the fact that world views and cultural values trickle down to professional values. Evidence is readily available to show that current professional values in architecture mirror core religious values and that pedagogy is the main instrument to accomplish the task. Furthermore, current debate related to critical theory forwards the notion that one world view, e.g., critical theory, should not be used to evaluate another world view. We might differ in judgement about a covert plan to systematically expose students to suffering experiences that erode their prejudices. On one side, the abolishment of prejudices guarantees their future, they insist. The other will object to the plan is an act of oppression. These expressions are value-laden. At the end of the day the values held by one world view, and expressed in the naming game as ‘oppression’ or ‘redemption’, is at the core of the tradition. This paper discusses the substance of value in a diverse world, t...
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2. INTRODUCTION

Many countries, seeking excellence in the development of their human resources, adopt an international education curriculum. At face value, the ‘adoption’ does not make sense. Education, being a social construction should be defined by the core values of the culture it serves. Understanding that we live in a diverse world with different cultures and religions we do not expect that an ‘international’ curriculum or an accrediting organization serve all nations and their educational institutions. Burger and Luckmann have presented how reality is socially constructed through the central role of knowledge and language in a systematic way. Their presentation rises to the theoretical level, i.e., what has been presented is a scientific investigation into the immutable processes of social construction of reality, and can readily provide an understanding of every particular instance (formal theory). This paper is not interested in the formal level of knowledge but rather the core values and r...
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3. RHETORIC:

  I am sure that most of us have come across professional values for a successful career, namely loyalty, compassion, patience, empathy, adaptability, responsibility, accountability, flexibility, work ethic, integrity, reliability, honesty, positivity, confidence, and self-motivation; they refer to desired characteristics in a business world. The first group of values are attitudes towards ‘others’ namely, company, fellow workers and team members, clients, etc. Loyalty to company, compassion towards colleagues, patients to understand others’ perspective, empathy to understand others’ point of view, and adaptability to respond to diverse requests. The second group of values are core personal values, namely, responsibility to complete tasks, accountability to take responsibility for your actions and conduct, flexibility to remain open-minded, work ethic to work hard, integrity to be dependable and honest, reliability always follow through on your commitments, honesty by demonstrat...
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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...
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5. ARCHITECTURE:

  How have the education of the architect impact architecture? The pinnacle of the reductionist modern movement can be found in the Deconstruction phase. Architects like Peter Eisenman, Frank O'Gehry, Coop Himmelblau, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, and Bernard Tschumi are said to have initiated the architectural movement. A visual analysis of both architectural graphics and built form of deconstruction architecture reveal common themes about graphic primitives, elements, organization, objectives and experiences. Graphic primitives are seen to bend, skew, tilt, break, divide, intersect, repeat, and shrink. Architectural elements are characterized as incomplete, fragmentary, leaning, curved, sharp, segmented, distorted, and cut into forms. Architectural organization include themes of juxtaposition, dispersion, shifting, sliding, wrapping, superimposition, grid planning, scaling, colliding, hung, zigzagging, absence, and recursive. Over-all architectural features are ...
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6. FUNDAMENTAL VALUES:

  Professors of architecture are of the opinion that architecture is an independent discipline, “‘we are all working within the architectural system.” I have also witnessed educators declaring that they are working within an ‘independent’ education system’. Berger and Luckman indicate alternatively that, “The ultimate legitimation for ‘correct’ action in [any] structure will then be their ‘location’ within a cosmological and anthropological frame of reference. [Wrong action] will attain its ultimate negative sanction as offence against the divine order of the cosmos and against the divine established nature of man.” [1] Taking a hint, we turn to present core theological values in order to understand underlying values. The above results of a western educational system compel us to seek out Christian fundamental values to understand core ‘cosmological’ principles. I did not expect an accurate mapping of values and actions as scripture is interpreted by community or nation in everyd...
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7. ALTERNATE VALUES:

  I am sure that gatherings and conferences host peoples from diverse traditions. Countries like USA, Germany and South Africa might have a predominant religion, i.e., Christianity, with varying percentage of denominations Catholic, Protestants, Evangelical and minorities committed to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and others. Other countries, e.g., Pakistan, predominantly follows Islam with minorities committed to other faiths. Questions arise as to the differences in fundamental values and how should education differ? The following are translations of relevant Islamic verses from the Quran indicating fundamental values and world view. On reality, “And of His signs is the  creation of the heavens and the earth  and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed, in that are signs for those of knowledge.” [1] (Al Quran 30:22) Seeking Knowledge, “O mankind! Behold, we have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made y...
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8. EDUCATION POLICY:

Regarding national and international educational policies, I shall address two (2) themes, the first is related to the relationship between primary and secondary socialization vis a vis different cultural values, and second, the meaning of international educational values propagated and the problematic nature of international educational policies. Berger and Luckmann write about the continuity of primary and secondary socialization, “The formal processes of secondary socialization are determined by its fundamental problem: it always presupposes a preceding process of primary socialization; that is, that it must deal with an already formed self and an already internalized world. It cannot construct subjective reality ex nihilo. This presents a problem because the already internalized reality has a tendency to persist. Whatever new contents are now to be internalized must somehow be superimposed upon this already present reality. There is, therefore, a problem of consistency between th...
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