The design centric programme, as I take to believe, aims to foster creativity and curiosity in the NUS engineering student. Such a programme would equip students to think holistically, critically and pragmatically; drawing knowledge from multiple disciplines, and then integrating them together with design as the primary focus.
Personally, I believe that the Design Centric Programme is rather noble, if not ingenious programme. I welcome it, and I too share in the ideals that it advocates. However I do not believe that such lofty aims would truly succeed in inculcating creativity and innovativeness of their students. You have noted that one of the possible reasons for such is the lack of willingness to change in mindset on the part of the students, and I agree to your point. After all, such idealistic change requires personal conviction and belief, and hence “it requires a strong will and great confidence in oneself”
Is it truly possible to inculcate values within an individual over a span of three or four years? Fundamental ethical values such as respecting each other take years to ‘sink into’ a child, and it is not truly realized until the child reasons it out to himself independently. Now, if such fundamental values already require years of inculcation before it may take effect, how more the values that ‘curiosity is good’, ‘creativity develops the individual’ and ‘design is the key to success’?
Moreover, to inculcate such a Design Centric ‘value’ would take more than just exposure time. Existing conflicting mindsets have to be torn down, or re-evaluated, for the student to truly believe and be independently innovative. We are aware that many students within the faculty study engineering merely “to get a certificate, a stable job, and be successful”. Also, the Asian value of “being safe than sorry” may result in students being reluctant to take risks and oppose the norm, thus hampering creativity and criticality in thought.
I have only considered the Design Centric Programme as a value today, but evidently we can already see the potential challenges it would be facing before such an aim becomes an achievement. Perhaps it would be ideal if such values were introduced at an earlier time (of education). Nevertheless, we should not despair in our attempts to continue inculcating these ideals into our current students of engineering. After all, learning (including values) never stops with age, and Rome was never built in a single day.
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