Engineers – The Next Generation

Certainly not the current salaries.

Maybe G. W. Bush could give an inspirational Speech to school kids.

s.udhayamarthandan -- There is much to be said for your ideas here (though I admit I have to read what you write a couple of times to really understand what you are saying)

There was a time in industrial areas of the USA (when I was growing up in the middle of the 20th century) when education actually operated the way you suggest. What that produced is there for all the world to see.

Such fertile ground for education no longer exists except in rare incidences. Corporations are driven by the US legal and investment culture away from the kind of long term goals that encourage them to invest in education at any but the high graduate levels for their immediate consumption. Further, our drive for equal opportunity, a good thing in general, has made us emphasize a secondary school general education curriculum dumbed down to fit all levels of intellect and talent. Political and cultural forces as well as the force of law have locked US public education into an expensive mediocrity trap that it may never get out of.

Other nations will (and are well advised to) avoid these traps as they guide their educational systems to benefit their own situations.

It is important to recognize that varying occupations require different sets of intellect and talent. Identifying and encouraging these special capabilities early in the education process may not ring well for the common man's demands for equality but are essential to a nation's economic success in the long run.

And further, there is a warning in a culture of prosperity that focuses largely on material acquisition and the pleasures of entertainment that should be taken seriously.

Ed Weldon

El Weldon,

Greetings to you and it seems you are seen missing for quite sometime. Happy to see your posts again.

The world is today at this level of comfort and activity just because of contributions from great inventors who persevered through out their lIves.

Education only leads to groom responsible and contributive future generation, that is is the very aim of human education system- RESPONSIBILTY, INNOVATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF LIFE.

It is just enough on the part of educators to motivate and inspire students for a responsible path whether job or career to work for and a pursuit of life.

We all have to set good examples for next generations to follow [I mean only positive deeds]adapt and cherish of their life.

Regards and thanking you for the G.A

A number of years ago a friend invited me to assist him in a computer class he was teaching at a local high school. The class consisted of 50 students playing on the internet on school computers. I asked for and received permission to try something a little different.

What I did was offer teach any interested students about what was actually inside the computer, and to help each one of them build and program their own PC. I got eleven students. During the next four months I gave a series of short lectures explaining the actual components of the computer, how to research and identify them, and how they worked together. Local businesses provided cast-off computers and components for my students to work with. The rest of the time I just stood around and answered questions.

Over the course of that semester, my eleven students built more than 40 PCs, provided critical computer service for the school, and many of them went to work part time for local computer stores. And I had more fun teaching that course than anything I have done since I retired from the Navy.

A few days into the next semester, the principal of the school informed me that, since there were only seven students enrolled in the class, my services would not be needed. When I explained this to the students, four of the seven quit the class. *Sigh*

DrMoose -- Don't blame the principal. Those folks are just cogs in a giant wheel driven into submission to a system that we, yes I said we, have created. The system that once was supposed to just educate the kids in areas that the parents were not able to has not morphed into a combination daylight babysitter, the principal agency for raising our offspring and a giant sorting and classifying system for their future employers. Add to that a legal structure that in order to "protect our cherished freedoms" has made it near impossible to maintain the decorum that is necessary for formal education. And don't forget a culture of self centeredness born of great prosperity and caring little about supporting the education of someone elses kids, expecially the ones who don't look and talk like us.

The education system is broken and it is in an irreversible downward death spiral that no amount of easy comfortable manipulation is going to be able to fix. The good part is that it's going to be a while before the bottom is reached. There's a lot of inertia there.

If I were advising young parents today I would tell them that their children's education will be largely their own responsibility and to prepare themselves for that. If that means private schools, home schooling or whatever is needed then they better plan their careers on that basis. And be ready to forego more than a few of life's expected luxuries. Because you can't be part of your children's education if you are working 60-70 hours a week to make the payments on the "american dream".

Ed Weldon

Hey Ed. I guess the one thing I didn't make clear was that I was teaching this class as a volunteer. I was not being paid for the work I was doing, nor for the course material that I developed on my own, from my own experience. The school didn't even provide the computers and parts we worked with. I did. That program cost the school nothing. No one told the principal that I had to be fired. It was purely his choice to ask me to leave.

DrMoose -- I suspected you were a volunteer. These school administrators are so entangled in the rules of the system that they end up having to do a lot of things that make absolutely no sense. But then maybe it was just a matter of you showing a big success while he was mostly mired in failure.

The basic problem with these huge systems is that they are so complex that it is near impossible to write the rule structure that is needed to make them able to operate efficiently in an equally complex environment. So what do we do when the system lets us down? We write more rules and make it more complex.

Ed Weldon

Moose....likewise happened here after 15 years of volunteering to teach kids math and navigation skills. The 'it's all about me' new principal decided to end the course with some lame excuse about 'disproportionate' learning. Disproportionate in this case meant those many scientists and engineers who work in this town now no longer could share their expertise with the kids in the interests of so called public education. She resigned after one year but not before we were forced to move to a church hall.

Sounds familiar. I taught "Operations and Production Management" for three semesters and used that opportunity to assemble an internet-based self-learning package for students. On the 1st day of 4th semester, I was told that I was not required to teach, not that subject, not any other subject because I was not holding an MBA degree (I have a Ph D in education, a Masters in Int Relations and I am Chairman of a company that services a 2x110 MW power plant.) No one is interested in the learning package either!

You'd be in good company here. The head of nuclear research at the lab was told likewise....not qualified! Meanwhile the school allowed creationism to be taught, or rather 'intelligent design', in order to placate the lobby. Same lobby that tried to remove Salingers' Catcher in the Rye from the library.

_{have to take my blood pressure pill now}

One reality fact about students is they are not so serious about future or their studies. For any student the prior day / night is of some serious concern because they don't like failing.

Not only school boys, even at college level students lack that drive to master practical work.

The liberalization of education also adds to flames by way of free pass system up to secondary school level. The communication skill level of students is deteriorating including average marks. Having arrears in many subjects is also becoming a fancy.

That adds to the fact that teachers got a great job to make them behave responsibly and seriously with great deal of motivation.

Necessity and crisis situations in life path automatically makes people become serious , as per the sayings 'EXPERIENCE THE BEST TEACHER'.

In light of our current educational system's shortcomings and the lack of appreciation for what engineers can/do bring to the good of society, it is no wonder fewer students opt for this field. We do not have the appeal ($) doctors, dentists, and lawyers and our own employers consider us as a financial liability (or debt entry) in the ledger sheet. The term "Engineer" has been applied to some many disciplines (example: Sanitation Engineer, a.k.a "garbage man") it has watered down the perceived value of the engineering fields as a whole. If you don't believe me, ask some non-engineering folks as to what we do or create. I already know the answer, it is usually along the lines of "Oh, I thought scientists or inventors did that, when did they start letting engineers design that kind of stuff?"

I have been "downsized' several times and the toll this takes on one's family is bad and friends and family ask why I stay in this field. I don't have a good answer to give them. If I seem a little sour about my perceived value, I'd like to share the past two times I was laid off. I worked at a large corporation that made both consumer and commercial products. Our company was given accolades for the large number of new products that they annually produced. Another corporation took us over and after three months, 80% (40 people) of the design, tooling and manufacturing engineering departments were let go. I was contacted six months later by the new corporation and asked to be one of the seven people the wanted to rehire. When asked how the selection was made, they stated they did a review this week of personnel records (from Human Resources) and I was "...definately worth keeping..." I asked why this wasn't done before the lay-off and they said improving the profitability for that quarter after the take over was paramount at that time.

The latest lay-off occurred one year ago, when the company decided that the current economic downturn was going to impact our growth in profits. We made our projected numbers for 2008, and to assure next year's (2009) projected profits were higher, a 10% reduction in force across the board from all divisions was necessary to keep the stock holders happy.

I see nothing on the horizon that would make a sane person want to pursue this type of career unless they are a masochist.

I believe Robin Williams said it best:"Wow, Reality, what a concept!"

enough said.

G²

Gsquared quoted "I see nothing on the horizon that would make a sane person want to pursue this type of career unless they are a masochist."

First people want to survive; then they want to enjoy their survival. Doctors and other health workers are important to that end as are dentists to the enjoyment part. In a modern culture another crucial element is money. Lawyers, accountants, police and bankers keep others from taking our money so we can survive and enjoy life. Business owners and managers make it easier to trade our labor for the things we need to live that we can't grow and make ourselves. Production, distribution and sales workers provide the things we need; farmers grow the things we eat. Entertainers give us enjoyment. Simply look at our media and their importance will show. Military people protect us from foreign invaders. Transportation workers enable us to comfortably travel long distances rapidly and cheaply. Government workers keep the rules based framework of our civilization operating. These are jobs that are important to people and are a good basis for a career if done well.

What to engineers do? They create plans, specifications and reports needed to show how things are to be built. For the most part these are not saleable products. Their creation can be postponed by most businesses in times of perceived crisis. Most people hardly know they exist.

Scientists search for and report on new knowledge. Their work can also be reduced in times of crisis to interpretation of existing knowledge. People usually don't understand science. Also scientific accomplishments are not very saleable.

Still want to have a technical career? Plan on the same feast or famine life that farmers have long learned to live. Stay away from science or engineering as a career unless you really love it and are prepared for the "famines" On the other hand engineering education is a good start for a career in business.

Ed Weldon

Hi Ed-

I enjoy your posts. I agree with the other people posting on the forum that the educational system needs repair, but taking it out behind the barn and killing it with an axe isn't the answer.

We engineers have been too successful at providing diversions, and the marketing arms of companies too savvy at pushing "the tyranny of the new" on young adults. Too often the technology isn't about gaining any new capability, but rather gaining social status. Under our current system this isn't going to change. Rather, we need to look at how we can set up a system where social status comes from creating rather than using. These skills do exist in certain sub-cultures. There was a nice article in the Nov. 9th Wall Street Journal on the resurgence of tinkering.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125798004542744219.html

You might also be interested in this YouTube presentation on the history of universities and ideas on how they can be redefined using more modern ideas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8xZ__FlfE

The problem is this new generation has had it too easy and they want to keep it that way. They are afraid to get there hands dirty. Technology certainly makes life easier, but it makes people lazy. It is unfortunately nearly impossible to convey the importance of science and engineering unless they have lived without. Maybe we should send them to a third world country for a couple of years, I think only then would it spark the necessity to learn

To entice kids to pursue engineering, first we (as a society) need to fix the image of the engineer. Despite over a decade of promising to fix our image, we are still perceived as boring unpopular nerds who should be taken advantage of by managers and by the public. We need to stop treating engineers as disposable commodities in the workforce. The few kids who plan for a career see what happens to their parents' generation and perceive too much work for too little gain. We honor all kinds of performers, athletes and politicians in very public displays, but never engineers. We give honorary college degrees to all kinds of popular but unproductive people, but we force engineers to try to keep up with technology mainly on their own time and dime. We've created a large group of bitter former and barely hanging on engineers, and the kids know it. So to entice kids to choose engineering we've got to make it attractive, not discouraging.

The real significance of this machine , together with the water on the moon, is that life on the moon starts to be an option. We've heard so much about space lift from the earth by a tension wire. From the moon it's a lot easier. Then VSS takes you up to the docking station and returns to earth. You slide, or peddle, or get solar powered down the wire to the moon station. A couple of generations plus a bit of will power, maybe sooner if the will power is there.