There's yet another survey out reporting on the ongoing decline of interest in engineering with American children. This particular survey was sponsored by the American Society for Quality. The bit that really stuck out to me: "More girls say their parents are likely to encourage them to become an actress than the number who say their parents are likely to encourage them to become an engineer."
When I was a kid, we had all sorts of construction toys: Lego, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Erector. Most of these are still around today, but there's something decidedly different about them. Of course, part of it is that they've been made "cheaper": Tinkertoys are now plastic instead of wood, and the old metal Erector sets are all-but-gone (I understand that there's a French company that sells them at exobitant prices), and there's a plastic analog called "Meccano" that is similar but not nearly the same. Aside from the cheapening of the quality, though, the change I notice more is the "dumbing down", especially of Lego.
When I first started with Lego, most of the sets consisted of large numbers of relatively ordinary blocks. You could build just about anything with them, provided you had the creativity to figure out how. Nowadays, it's very hard to find kits like these. Virtually all of the Lego kits available for sale in most stores today have far fewer parts, and many of those parts are specialized to the building of one or two specific models, usually a reproduction of some thing from a movie or TV show or similar. Because the parts are so specialized, and there are so few of them in the kit, really all you can do with the kit is build the one or two designs that it's been made to reproduce. The child has been reduced from an engineer who designs and builds creations of their own design, to an assembly line worker, tasked to reproduce a design created by someone else.
Another thing I remember from my youth were the "n in 1" electronic experimenter kits, which had a bunch of electronic components attached to a fiberboard base with connecting terminals between them, and a large supply of wires so you could interconnect them. The kits also came with a book full of circuits you could build that would do various interesting things, often with suggestions for variations that one could experiment with. I haven't seen one of these in a store in a long while, although I think you can still get them from a few online merchants.
Of course, this is chicken and egg to some degree; the demand for these sorts of toys is down because children are not interested in such toys, but interest in such toys is going to remain low as long as they're not available. I think a large part of this is the change in strategies for marketing to children that took place starting in the seventies. By the mid-eighties virtually all children's toys were tied in some way to a movie or a TV show. And there just aren't many movies and TV shows that feature engineers, for some reason.
I recall reading an article a while back about how something like half of all students in China are studying to become engineers. It's at most 15 percent in the United States, if the ASQ survey is to be believed. Says something about the direction our two countries are going, doesn't it?
One of the consequences of the explosion of the Internet has been to make being into "technology" cool once again, at least. And it can't go without notice that the third richest man in the United States got there, at least in part, by being a geek. So maybe this generation of kids will be more inclined to turn toward careers in technology, and not just in using it. We can only hope.
(Inspired by this post by Dan KB6NU.)
When I was a kid, we had all sorts of construction toys: Lego, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Erector. Most of these are still around today, but there's something decidedly different about them. Of course, part of it is that they've been made "cheaper": Tinkertoys are now plastic instead of wood, and the old metal Erector sets are all-but-gone (I understand that there's a French company that sells them at exobitant prices), and there's a plastic analog called "Meccano" that is similar but not nearly the same. Aside from the cheapening of the quality, though, the change I notice more is the "dumbing down", especially of Lego.
When I first started with Lego, most of the sets consisted of large numbers of relatively ordinary blocks. You could build just about anything with them, provided you had the creativity to figure out how. Nowadays, it's very hard to find kits like these. Virtually all of the Lego kits available for sale in most stores today have far fewer parts, and many of those parts are specialized to the building of one or two specific models, usually a reproduction of some thing from a movie or TV show or similar. Because the parts are so specialized, and there are so few of them in the kit, really all you can do with the kit is build the one or two designs that it's been made to reproduce. The child has been reduced from an engineer who designs and builds creations of their own design, to an assembly line worker, tasked to reproduce a design created by someone else.
Another thing I remember from my youth were the "n in 1" electronic experimenter kits, which had a bunch of electronic components attached to a fiberboard base with connecting terminals between them, and a large supply of wires so you could interconnect them. The kits also came with a book full of circuits you could build that would do various interesting things, often with suggestions for variations that one could experiment with. I haven't seen one of these in a store in a long while, although I think you can still get them from a few online merchants.
Of course, this is chicken and egg to some degree; the demand for these sorts of toys is down because children are not interested in such toys, but interest in such toys is going to remain low as long as they're not available. I think a large part of this is the change in strategies for marketing to children that took place starting in the seventies. By the mid-eighties virtually all children's toys were tied in some way to a movie or a TV show. And there just aren't many movies and TV shows that feature engineers, for some reason.
I recall reading an article a while back about how something like half of all students in China are studying to become engineers. It's at most 15 percent in the United States, if the ASQ survey is to be believed. Says something about the direction our two countries are going, doesn't it?
One of the consequences of the explosion of the Internet has been to make being into "technology" cool once again, at least. And it can't go without notice that the third richest man in the United States got there, at least in part, by being a geek. So maybe this generation of kids will be more inclined to turn toward careers in technology, and not just in using it. We can only hope.
(Inspired by this post by Dan KB6NU.)
This whole thing is a little bit depressing to me. I'm an engineer, and as my work in wiki-world will attest I'm very interested in promoting and improving engineering education.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, there are almost too many problems to name. Besides the obvious criticisms of engineering programs (bad teachers, bad textbooks, bad and outdated curricula, heavy reliance on calculus that many college-headed students aren't prepared for in public school, etc), there are all sorts of societal problems that keep engineering off the radar when kids start looking forward to their careers.
You turn on the TV and see the famous singers and famous actresses. Careers in these fields are handed out to amateurs on national television with no required training, no real work, no "it will get worse before it gets better". People don't tell their kids the truths about these jobs: You won't have steady work, the pay won't be good, you'll be supporting yourself as a waitress at nights, and your odds of "making it" are roughly one in ten thousand. Young, poor, aspiring actresses are more likely to end up as "escorts" then they are to break into hollywood.
Don't even get me started on the decreasing quality of toys like Legos and Erector Sets. They're not even worth buying anymore.
Whitekinght said—
ReplyDeleteCareers in these fields are handed out to amateurs on national television with no required training, no real work, no "it will get worse before it gets better"
Yes, just as lottery winnings are handed out to people with no more investment than a $1 ticket. The catch is, of course, that these outcomes are one in a million events. Career success from the sciences, on the other hand, is fairly reproducible.
Perhaps one of the first steps should be to educate the public enough so that they recognize efforts to become successful though those pop paths as the ludicrous gambles that they are.
Of course, that alone isn't enough. It's probably worthwhile to go for a long shot if thats all you want… so there has to be matching education to reveal other paths as enjoyable endeavours.
While engineering of physical constructions does seem to be on the decline, the engineering of abstract systems may be entering a golden age.
ReplyDeleteAbstract systems include not only software systems (such as the social networking systems that have dominated Web 2.0), but storycraft systems that have begun to appear in gaming cultures. Watch for the features of dramaturgy to emerge as cultural artifacts supported by a new generation of artistic tools.
Wikipedia might be a failure as a compendium of encyclopedic knowledge, but it's an astonishing success as a drama engine (however unintentional that objective might have been).
Once people realize the attraction of open-participation drama systems, they will migrate to systems intentionally designed to fulfill that niche.
I think there's a great deal of oversupply of engineers from India and China. Given the ease of travel and relatively liberal immigration policies, it seems natural that Americans will react by cutting back on the supply of engineers.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, as an Indian, I found this article strange, because back in India educators are fighting a losing battle to convince people to study the liberal arts. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the boys in my graduating class in school applied to engineering programs.
Add me to the list of proud engineering students. And it's true, it's on the decline.
ReplyDeleteOut of my graduating class (this was almost 3 years ago), almost no one was going the engineering route. Everyone was doing business or some liberal art. Unfortunately, it's because people just want to get through college with the least amount of work possible. A bachelor's is no longer an indication of having studied a subject in college, merely that you attended.
I miss my "n in 1" kit :( I wonder if it's still in the closet at my parents' place somewhere. Would be fun to play with again...