Is “Design Thinking” the new liberal arts?

Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts? (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Short answer: NO

Long answer: First, I hate the fact that this article is not available publicly, because it might be interesting to actually read. And it’s totally not fair for me to critique it based simply on the headline. That out of the way, let me expand on the short answer. No, “design thinking” isn’t the new liberal arts.

How about this headline, “Is this Harvard course on Jane Austen the new liberal arts?” or “Right triangles – the new geometry?”

That’s not to say that Jane Austen and right triangles aren’t interesting things to study and students could certainly go deeper than current curriculum practices tend to do. But let’s be clear. Design thinking is a way to “schoolify” the process of design, and to focus on a narrow slice of product design.

Now – you can tell me that this school or that curriculum gets design thinking “right” and I’d probably agree. A teacher who cares about design and has agency over his or her classroom can take the process of design thinking and do amazing things. (See Design Thinking, Computational Thinking, and Making in the Classroom – Good, Bad, Worse for my thoughts on this.)

Unfortunately, a lot of design thinking goes back to school dressed up in way too much process – too much planning, too teacher-managed and teacher-directed, too focused on “the market” as a driver, too much delivering a report “about” a product, and not enough actual doing.

It’s human nature to look for the new new thing. And I heartily applaud teachers looking beyond the back of the textbook for things that engage students fully – head, heart, and hands. I suspect that the willingness to try new things as a teacher is the best indication of the thing’s actual potential as a game changer.

Hopefully this headline was followed up by a more nuanced article – it could happen!

 

3 Replies to “Is “Design Thinking” the new liberal arts?”

  1. I love the way you summed it up by writing:
    Unfortunately, a lot of design thinking goes back to school dressed up in way too much process – too much planning, too teacher-managed and teacher-directed, too focused on “the market” as a driver, too much delivering a report “about” a product, and not enough actual doing.

    For some twisted reason we appear to be hell-bent on bureaucratizing everything… and the magic of creating is obliterated in the process.

  2. It would be nice read the whole text of article, but I’m not subscribing just so I can read it, sorry bad form on the posting, referencing articles that can’t be accessed.

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