[modeleng] Re: Engineering education - rant

"...pride in workmanship...:  Very important trait.  I
am not an engineer of any sort, yet when I was in my
late teens, I bought an Amatuer Radio magazine and
found in it the plans for building a single transistor
radio receiver.  I went down to a local electronics
store and bought the list of materials.  Back home, I
found a suitable plastic box to house them all and
proceeded to mount, wire and solder the components
together.  I can very well remember the thrill I got
when I turned it on and it WORKED!  I still get a
thrill when someting that I build "works".  Sadly, in
these days, some will never have that emotional high
that comes from building something with their own
hands.

All you Engineers and Machinists out there keep up the
good work!!

Al 
--- peter.chadwick@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> 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
> 
> MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST.
> 
> To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email
> to, 
> modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
> "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
> 



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. 
Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta.
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html
MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST.

To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, 
modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

Other related posts: