by Francisco Gaspar, Spark Journal Vol 3, No 1 (2018), Student Contribution
https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/issue/view/7
The basis for Gaspar’s commentary on educational practices is the commercialisation of graphic design in university which mass produces students with the same thinking.
Lower requirements lead to higher student satisfaction which is a factor that attracts new students and in term fills the courses and keeps funding up.
He challenges existing structures and interrogates the role of the graphic designer and the role of the teacher. The concept he suggests to have more of a critical and challenging relationship between graphic design teachers and students is the ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ (Alienation Effect or Estrangement Effect). This is a term coined by Bertholt Brecht with relation to Epic Theatre in which the audience experience of a story is intentionally interrupted to take them away from being a passive observer and drive them into a more active role of learning or realising something new outside of the storyline.
For university this means that students should not just passively take all the learnings from a teacher, but be challenged to actively create the learning and critique the learning environment.
A few questions that arose for me from this article:
How can critique be integrated more into the teaching? Critique usually comes in when talking about the work of the students. Rather than just giving an opinion or offering a solution I often ask a question and let students challenge their own thinking. How can I foster more critique during the main sessions that are not already discussing existing student work?
How can one disrupt the teaching and learning habits to play with new methods and create new habits?
This article goes hand in hand with Dall’Alba’s account of Ontology and Epistemology. I was drawn to it because of the German word in the title. Looking at the date of the publication I later realised that I had taught Francisco Gaspar in the first year I taught on BA GMD. Just this fact in itself is such a beautiful illustration of the relationship between teachers and students that he writes about. While the student is learning from the teacher, every teacher continues to learn from the students and the learner should challenge the teaching so that there is continued growth and adaptation. I am very grateful for all the learnings from my students over the years and the different perspectives and personalities I have encountered. They make me a better teacher, designer and a more compassionate person.