| Rule or law |
[Jul. 1st, 2014|11:11 am] |
vecais labais Skolotājs
In his article on book proportions, Tschichold says: ‘A line has eight to twelve words, more is wrong.’ This is a rule. Rules want to be observed because they can be broken: I can make longer lines.
Tschichold’s rule might be changed into a law: Lines of more than twelve words impair legibility. My law accepts the condition of the rule with the significant difference that it does not say what is wrong, but what happens. A law cannot be broken because it does not prescribe anything. It only predicts illegibility when lines exceed the limit of twelve words, leaving the responsibility for legibility to the designer: If the law holds, I cannot make longer lines without impairing legibility.
A rule paralyses discussion; a law provokes discussion by encouraging attempts to refute it. A law stimulates the student to find instances for which it is invalid, which eventually results in a better law with a wider scope. The law sends its disciples to the front-line; rules entrench them. The rule promises paradise, but in obedient submission. The law promises the wilderness, but in freedom.
These characteristic differences should be sufficient to keep away from rules in teaching. They lay a burden of orthodoxy upon the student and make teaching dull. On the other hand, I have only to enter a class with a provoking law to get that sparkle in my students’ eyes that I like to start with.
Students are frightened by freedom as soon as they understand that freedom leaves them alone with their own judgement. They are inclined to escape into fundamentalism by referring to the ‘trend’ or to the rules of some authority. ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.’ (Read the edifying story in the first chapters of Genesis.) A school has to persuade its students to enjoy the dangers of freedom. Every task I give my students should be a new challenge to test the conditions of the law, to find out the edges of its viability.
https://hyphenpress.co.uk/journal/article/rule_or_law |
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