Editorial

Abstract

At the heart of Design Education there is one simple objective - that it is to be of benefit to the children and students who experience it. The debate about such matters as design processes, problem solving strategies and subject integration, though important, is only about the means whereby the central objective may be identified and achieved more fully. It is not enough, for Design Education to develop peoples awareness to the material world, their feelings and sensitivity have to develop too if their awareness is to be of any value. The point is well put in the recently published Schools Council Working Paper Art and the Adolescent:-

";Secondary schools are relatively successful in promoting our understanding of and competence in the world of objects - indeed the bulk of the curriculum is geared to that purpose. However, much less is known about the way we order subject experience - still less of the way the individual can be helped to build a coherent world of personal feelings. Those whose feelings are unintelligible to them are as assuredly handicapped in the regulating of their lives as those others who are unable to think coherently and who can make Iittle sense of the world they share with other men";.

In this issue of Studies in Design Education and Craft we print a group of articles that focus on the experience of children and students in Design Education and set out ways in which their experience may be enhanced.