Why Does it Matter?
The Moral Need for Engineering Skills in education
What is the issue with loosing Britain’s engineering skills. You may well be familiar with the governmental incentive for promoting both large and small companies in engineering. Engineering represents 21% of the British GDP, which has in the past been as high as 34% (1990), so for the government, it represents a huge commercial opportunity for taxation, leading to more hospitals, schools or what ever else the taxpayers money is spent on. It also has the potential to put a huge dent in unemployment, which keeps the electorate happy, I may sound cynical, but there really isn't anything wrong with these motivations, but I want to have a look at the problem from a very different perspective.
Below are two TED talks, from British inventors, who have made enormous impacts, to very different types of people, to change their lives for ever. I thoroughly recommend you watching them, if you haven’t already. The first is Marc Koska, talking about how he invented a single use syringe, to stem the spread of HIV, due to the medical reuse of syringes.
This invention by someone who wasn't formally educated in a technical manor, but had a pragmatic attitude when he went travelling as a teenager, has lead him to save the lives of millions of people.
The second is the much more celebrated Tim Burners-Lee, British inventor of the internet, who has played a role of similar significance to the discoverer of iron to the Iron Age. Burners-Lee talks about the power of information and the amazing things that are made possible by the innovative application of the vast array of information that is now available, with heart warming results.
These two talks both show examples of stories where people have invented solutions of enormous ethical value almost serendipitously, through their experiences and an underlying optimism/pragmatism, inspired by a basic grounding in technical possibility. For Burners-Lee, he was a world leading computer scientist/physicist at the time, but for Koska, he hadn't much experience at all. If these two people didn't have the mind set that was conducive to their “eureka” moment — to impose a cliché — the world would be unrecognisable, and millions of us wouldn't be alive to experience it. With the dwindling exposure of my generation, to functional understanding of their surroundings and the possibilities of technology, imagine the opportunities that are being lost, where people are in the right place at the right time, but don’t have the experience to capitalise on it? Think of the technological paradigm changes and the lives of the future.
I do not believe that morally, we cannot deprive humanity of the best possible chance of realising these innovations, especially given the scales that are possible with the developed population. Morally as well as economically and politically, we are obliged to promote technical subjects in education.
for more details:
http://www.georgededwards.co.uk/policy/why-does-it-matter-why-are-engineering-skills-important
