Save the engineers — Rulerless

We need the engineers of the world, badly.

School is not set up to help them succeed, though.

School rewards good penmanship, strong language skills, facility with numbers, social ease, and athletic ability. Bonus points if you are well organized and approval-seeking.

Forgive me for broadly generalizing here: Engineers are often good at numbers. But their other strengths — such as spatial ability, innovation, making unusual connections, finding shortcuts, tolerance for failure, skill at manipulating inanimate objects, and asking challenging questions — can be virtually invisible in a typical liberal arts-based K - 12 curriculum.

A few examples:

Students are punished for not “showing their work” on a math test. As my friend David put it (David is chair of the computer science department at a prestigious university): “What work?” Able to mentally arrange numbers in various configurations (possibly in a way that outpaces their own teacher’s ability to do so), the gifted math student is forced to put this process into words using a brain that is not optimized for words and hands that are very bad at forming letters.
The student who strategically weighs the effort required for a task against the potential reward is said to be lazy, despite the fact that exactly this kind of shrewd evaluation is a key driver of effectiveness in business. For instance, they might calculate that 5 hours of study would be required to get a 98 on a test, while only 30 minutes of study would be enough for an 85. Deciding to go for the 85 is similar to, for instance, switching to a thinner plastic for a key component of a piece of hardware, sacrificing 13% of the lifespan of the component to save 90% on costs.
If a student finds a more convenient way to complete schoolwork, they are “taking the easy way out,” when virtually every human invention (the printing press, the dishwasher, the automobile, the laptop computer) is rooted in the exact same impulse.
For decades, we have devalued “the trades” and their associated skills in favor of pushing kids toward college. Consequently, there is little opportunity for aspiring makers, tinkerers, and problem-solvers to experiment with materials and build on the skills that come easily to them, whether they are interested in becoming an electrician or an electrical engineer.

Of the engineers, developers, makers, and technicians I know, some tolerated school pretty well and some excelled, but many remember not fitting in well, making poor grades, or even being directly thwarted in their passionate pursuits. The system is just not set up to recognize their abilities.

For instance, my brother, a software developer who started learning programming at age 12 outside of school, was vexed by an artwork component of a high school history project until two of my sister’s friends felt such pity that they stepped in to “help.” He also refused to spend his time coloring photocopied anatomy and botany illustrations for a better grade on his biology notebook in ninth grade. Luckily, my mom accepted this and didn’t fight him on it. The only computer-related course available to him in high school (this was the late nineties) was a keyboarding class.

My uncle, one of the most brilliant people I know, was thought to be of low intelligence because he barely spoke throughout grade school. One day, he stepped up to teach his own high school math class to answer a classmate’s question better than the teacher could.

A former student of mine, who found sitting in class virtually intolerable and whose frequent off-topic outbursts frustrated his teachers and classmates, reconfigured and rewired our entire LAN using scavenged equipment and supplies.

Another friend attempted college, but couldn’t get through it. He had been unable to take any industrial arts or engineering classes in high school, but subsequently learned the skills to renovate his own home, write computer programs, and develop custom hardware and packaging for his family business.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence, either, that all of the stories I’ve shared here are from men and boys; girls have an even more profound challenge when it comes to identifying and building upon technical skills or an interest in engineering. For many people, it’s hard to see yourself doing something when you don’t see anyone who looks like you doing it.

We do have to rework school to be more friendly to those with an aptitude for engineering. This is happening in many districts with a STEM or STEAM focus. Until this is widespread, these students need to be given space to do what they’ve been doing for generations: Get through schoolwork as quickly as possible so they can spend the maximum time outside of school working on their projects.

These students should be allowed to move ahead at their desired pace in math. They should be permitted to skip laborious activities like multi-digit multiplication and cursive writing if such activities prove to be a stumbling block. They should be given meaningful, hands-on challenges that may not track perfectly with grade-level expectations (in fact, they may be completely absent from the regular curriculum) but nonetheless create powerful learning experiences.

It’s not that a liberal arts education is unimportant, or that social skills don’t matter, or that engineering is more important than other subjects. But where engineering is completely missing from the traditional curriculum or undervalued by liberal arts-oriented, traditional teachers, it will be helpful to bring things back into balance to validate complementary strengths and provide a more well-rounded education.

An applied science education good not just for the future engineers, but for the rest of us. How many of us walk around in complete ignorance of all the systems that must function (from the sewer, electrical grid, and traffic lights to our own WiFi, coffee maker, and garage door opener) in order to have the comfort we are used to? Even if the apocalypse isn’t coming, we all could benefit from basic technical skills and knowledge.

Somewhere along the line, bureaucrats decided that history and physical education were critical to a student’s development. I hope the bureaucrats of the future move toward more inclusive approach to engineering and technology education. In the meantime, if your kid is struggling with the traditional curriculum, consider that she could be an artist…or maybe she’s an engineer.