Don’t Make Engineering Cool
“Executives make engineering cool at 6th grade center.” I read the headline and I jumped a little, doing the kind of double take you perform when you think you’re picking up a glass of milk and you’ve accidentally grabbed the ice water.
You’ve seen the prototypical headline before, especially if you’re in a corporate scientific field. The office leaders are out to show a wide eyed schoolgirl how valuable a STEM education can be, how exciting engineering and science are, and how much she has to look forward to should she choose that course of study.
The truth is engineering really can be cool. It can be challenging and rewarding and multi-faceted and can help reach people and make their lives better, that’s why good engineers pursue their work. But the same can be said of anthropology and clarinet performance.
The issue is not with introducing of engineering and science, it’s with the introduction’s frame. When we use only robots and spaghetti bridges we set an expectation that all engineering careers will be hands-on and action packed all the time. It would be exactly the same to host an “Introduce a kid to accounting” day and only have them pour quarters in a change counting machine. Kids, by nature, love these loud, engaging activities, but that doesn’t mean they’re are learning what it means to be an engineer or an accountant.
Real learning can only occur when experiential learning has a comprehensive scope and students are allowed, over time, to see many aspects of a field and bear some of its responsibilities. Corporations sell engineering to students because they want to brightest future workers to work for them, but too often these pitches offer a limited view of what engineering and science really look like.
Should we introduce our kids to engineering and science to get them interested in these fields? Yes. We should also do it with music and social science and it’s not wrong to show off the very real and exciting parts of any of these fields, but let’s strive to make those demonstrations holistic and realistic.
Show kids how exciting engineering and science can be, but show them the attention to detail it requires. Show them that there are opportunities for interesting work in those fields, but show them that the vast majority of work available may not be all innovation and excitement. Show them that they can build those spaceships and spaghetti bridges, but it takes time and hard work or luck to get there.
We can do this by offering our students from grade school to university more opportunities to work on real projects and have flat-faced conversations with people working in all different fields. Let’s introduce kids to engineering, but let’s introduce it honestly and not sell it because without a doubt we will sell it short.
