Newcastle City Library isn’t really just a library; it is a cultural venue as significant to the city than the flagship venues of The Sage and BALTIC. There’s an openness to the place, from the glass exterior, to the open plan interior, and to the fact it’s completely self-service.
Initially, the library was accused of an ‘appalling lack of security’ for not requiring identification when registering for the service. I congratulate the Library on showing a level of trust which otherwise seems to be rare in our civic spaces.
I use the library quite regularly during the week, as a place to work, drink coffee and read the papers. If you haven’t been yet, go. It’s marvellous.
On a Saturday afternoon, Grey’s Monument in Newcastle usually hosts Christian evangelists from different groups using various methods to indoctrinate passers-by with their religion; from the hell-and-damnation-type shouting preachers to the well organised and massively funded Alpha Course, who cleverly use the ‘Big Question’ type of rhetoric to encourage people to sign up for a ten week course on the Bible.
Today, handing out leaflets near a small table stacked with printed material, were two representatives from the North East Humanists. Many would argue that these people are trying to do a similar thing to the Christian evangelists, to bring people around to their world view. I would argue that as a registered charity they are there to campaign for secular interests: the abolishment of faith schools, the teaching of Science without the hindrance of religious sensitivity, and the promotion of the rather obvious idea that people can be good to one another without fearing the wrath of a supernatural entity.
At Newcastle University on the 11th of November – in a joint lecture with the North East Humanists to commemorate the forthcoming 200th Anniversary of Darwin’s birth – Professor Steve Jones will be giving a talk entitled ‘Is evolution over?’. It’s an astonishing fact that many millions of people in the UK believe evolution never even started. Anyway, I’ll be there.
I believe our only hope for the future it to adopt a new conception of
human ecology, one in which we start we reconstitute our conception of
the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our
minds in the way that we have strip-mined the earth for a particular
commodity, and for the future it won’t service. We have to rethink the
fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.
Sir Ken Robinson
In a stunning talk for the TED conference last year, Sir Ken Robinson argues that our education system is based on old fashioned ideas of achievement; that the goal of education is to put titles before and after our names, rather than equip children for a changing world. He argues that creativity is educated out of us, and creative subjects such Art, Drama and Dance are very much secondary to more ‘academic’ subjects such as Languages and Sciences.
I experienced this process as I progressed through the education system, and I’m seeing its effects in my current place of work, where productivity is blighted by a lack of creative thinking. Furthermore, I know many people for who School education did not work, yet I consider them to be incredibly intelligent people. Robinson talks about a spectrum of intelligence in our society, however it seems that only a small part of this spectrum is addressed in our schools.
For a bit of extra cash, I have secured another contract to teach web design to a bunch of photography students during a series of evening classes. The first session went well, I taught the basic concepts of Mark-Up, a brief history of the Web, the ‘browser wars’ and the importance of standards [I used the analogy of ISO photographic film speeds such 100 and 200 etc., – clever huh?] . I then got them started with a basic HTML document ready to resume in the second session. So, after 3 hours, they went away having learnt quite a bit about the web and everyone – including me – was happy. Then the second session came along and I hit a dilemma, which was this: Do I teach ‘old-style’ HTML [tables, font tags, style merged with content etc.] or do I teach the emerging technologies of XML, XHTML and CSS [style separate from content], so that they will go away armed with a bit of knowledge about how to develop for today’s multi-platform Internet. The ‘old’ way of designing would be easier for them to grasp because there is much less to take in [remember that these guys have no previous experience of web design, many of them are only just starting to be interested in it], and it would be enough to knock-up a basic online folio of their images. On the other hand, even though the ‘new way’ is a much better way of designing web sites, there is much more to take in. But what is the point in teaching out-dated methods that will not give them a competitive edge if they ever want to become professional web designers? So… I elected to teach them a bit about the ‘new way’, which, although is perhaps the best thing to do in the long run, there are a few reasons why I shouldn’t have done this: a] I’m only just learning about all this myself and I’m certainly no expert; b] It involves concepts that are tricky to grasp if you’re new at all this stuff; and c] they only want a simple folio of images anyway, so teaching these new technologies might be overkill. Anyway… it’s a difficult dilemma, what do you think I should do?
I’ve got 12 hours to teach a group of photography students on how to get a website up and running. Bearing in mind that most of them know little about web design [or computers in general for that matter], I think it’s going to be pretty difficult in the time I’ve got. I’m tempted to teach them how to create and maintain a weblog which would compliment an online folio of photography work. This would not only teach them the basics of HTML and FTP etc., but also, I think it would help to enthuse them about online culture in general and the importance of keeping a website fresh with content.
Today, one my students told me that her parents are about to buy her a Mac, but she’s not sure which one to get. She didn’t know about the G4 Powerbook until I told her about it, so guess what she is going to ask Mummy and Daddy for now? Makes you sick, no?
None other than Jonathan Ive [lead designer at Apple and the person responsible for the iMac and the Cube etc] was here in the office the other day. He was picking up an honourary degree from Northumbria Uni where he studied Industrial Design 10 years ago [the course I do a bit of teaching on]. He had an ‘entourage’ of university VIP types around him and I’m sure he really couldn’t be arsed with it all. Even though he’s probably worth a few million and he’s helped Apple out of the doldrums [for a while anyway] he seems quite a modest chap who hates the formality of these occasions. The current 3rd Year of the Industrial Design course are collaborating with Ive/Apple on a project – lucky so and so’s.
Newcastle City Library isn’t really just a library; it is a cultural venue as significant to the city than the flagship venues of The Sage and BALTIC. There’s an openness to the place, from the glass exterior, to the open plan interior, and to the fact it’s completely self-service.