[modeleng] Re: Engineering education - rant

I have been watching this thread with interest. For the last two years, I 
have been assisting in some schools as a science and engineering ambassador. 
This involves going into participating schools and encouraging kids to go 
into engineering from an early age. The scheme is nationwide and known as 
SETNET, my local one being organised by Birmingham University and all the 
science and engineering ambassadors are volunteers.. It is sponsored by some 
major firms, British Airways, Rover and others as well as support from the 
education system and the goverment. It is sad to see that in some schools, 
the machine shops are very rarely used except for demonstrations, it appears 
some schools are scared of the kids hurting themselves and then suing the 
school. Seems a waste of resources to me, I loved metalwork at school. When 
speaking to the kids, I always emphasise that it is ok to know how to 
programme a computer but you have to know how to get around things manually 
if the pc fails.

Networkrail have a superb apprentice scheme with the first year being spent 
at HMS Sultan in Portsmouth, what facilities and so well run.
This thread could go on for ages and I think all the guys here would be in 
agreement that basic mechanical engineering is in decline. How many school 
leavers can use a file properly, know how to drill and tap a hole? All the 
basics that could disappear.

Ok, my turn to climb down off my soapbox now, who's turn is it next?

Dave.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <peter.chadwick@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 1:59 AM
Subject: [modeleng] Re: Engineering education - rant


40 years or so ago, as a technician apprentice at The Marconi Company
Ltd., in Chelmsford, we got a workshop practice course. use of lathe,
mill, surface grinder etc etc. Not that I was any good at welding....
At college, we did technical drawing ( but in the first year
only),electrical engineering, radio engineering, applied mechanics,
physics, and social studies, which was  a posh name for three lessons a
week - industrial and commercial law, industrial psychology and labour
relations, history of industrial development  and industrial health and
safety. We also did a course leading to a qualification in technical
writing. Colege was either one day and one evening a week, or sometimes a
13 week sandwich.

17 years later, my wife did a degree course and got a 12 week workshop
practice course. So she knows how to use a lathe, mill, etc, although
hasn't used them for years.

Today's new graduate knows how to use a computer, but not how the circuits
he's designing really work, or how to put them together, or often even
really how to measure the results. So we get results quoted to an
impressive number of decimal points with an accuracy to perhaps the first
one of them

Have we advanced?

The other thing that you get (eventually) from learning how to make things
is pride in your workmanship, even if it's just in the design of circuitry
or whatever. I suspect that in the future, only model engineers will be
able to get that.

Peter Chadwick

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