SINGAPORE: “Eh 'cher, you know you can do it this way,” says my 14-year-old seatmate to me, as she peers over my arm at my iPad screen.
Despite my background in art and my significantly lowered standards for what constitutes “passable”, it is clear that Design & Technology lessons these days are not what they used to be. As much as I preferred working with pencil and paper, replacing old school materials with an iPad – or “personal learning device” as it’s called – is expected compared to the more drastic changes since D&T’s inception.
Both TS and D&T remained compulsory at lower secondary levels and elective at upper secondary levels until 2007, when the subjects underwent a review. D&T was then offered to all students to"support the shift towards designing and making". As an elective subject at upper secondary levels, however, schools made"school-based decisions" on whether to offer the subject.
About 18 years later, I don’t remember what happened to the green and orange pencil holder I made with the machine nor, frankly, the last time I used a pencil. But I still remember my excitement whenever D&T lessons rolled around. After all, sitting in class with students less than half my age almost two decades after I thought I’d left D&T in the dust, I realised that the subject is actually one of the most applicable beyond school.
On the other hand, there also needs to be the “element of timeliness”, as technology is ever-changing.One of the class assignments I was given centred around such technology: Design a wooden coin bank using the Sketchbook app. The project was anchored on the theme of wildlife conservation, so our coin banks were drawn to resemble endangered animals.
Meanwhile, I was figuring out how to adjust the thickness of my brush. I eventually also discovered how to draw a perfectly straight or curved line with the ruler tool, and transform my elephant sketch from 2D to 3D. But my sense of pride evaporated when Mdm Cheng instructed us to render our sketch. Similarly, another classmate, Tessa Tay, said she learnt resilience from trying to adapt to an unfamiliar medium. She and her classmates “persevered and pushed through, and we manage to do what the teacher has assigned us to do”.
In the 1970s, there were Basic Electricity, Metalwork and Woodwork offered to both boys and girls in Sec 1 and 2. I come from a girl school and had both Technical and home economic classes in those 2 years. I took Metalwork Theory for ‘O’ Levels…