A friend of mine has been doing the rounds of university open days with his daughter, who is considering studying art and design. When they went to Goldsmiths, University of London they were told that the ethos of the Art and Design Department was:
to develop students who are thoughtful, creative and critical. By "critical", we mean "questioning the ways things are".
It strikes me that this is an excellent statement of purpose, not just for a university art and design department but for all education. Of course it reminds me of one of that things Noam Chomsky said in the video featured in my previous post:
Do we want to have a society of free, creative, independent individuals able to appreciate and gain from the cultural achievements of the past and to add to them? Do we want that, or do we want people who can increase GDP?
I take my hat off to Goldsmiths for expressing its purpose and ethos in terms of thoughtfulness, creativity and questioning the status quo. We definitely need to hear more of this sort of thing from educational institutions.
The picture above is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence
Comments