This might come across as a very strange question but is it uncommon to find engineers who did not enjoy school or think highly of the schools that they attended? I have encountered numerous computing and IT types over the years who did not enjoy school or had bad experiences at school but very few electrical or mechanical engineers.
I'd just like to give a slightly different slant on this - in my experience of working with schools (and, indeed, employers) I see two quite different approaches. One is, as you say, that engineering is an academic degree-based discipline. The other is that it is a practically based discipline. Some schools I have been involved with definitely guide their top streams into engineering, whereas - for example - the school my children attended very much had the attitude that if you were academic you went into science, if you weren't you went into engineering.
Which just goes to show that schools really don't understand the range of engineering careers around. But then neither do many engineers, so it's not surprising!
One difficulty I see us having is that the membership of PEIs deosn't necessarily give (in fact I believe doesn't give) an accurate perspective on the range of attributes or backgrounds of successful engineers. Those who join PEIs are a self-selecting minority which are likely to have their own biases. To give an idea of the sort of attitude I'm thinking of, there was a furious debate in Mensa a few years ago when members started suggest that the fact that there were far more male than female members "proved" that men had on average higher IQs than women. Completely missing the point that membership was a self selected group of 1.5% of those eligible to join. So all it actually proved was that more men than women were the type of person who joins Mensa.
So in a sense I'm not worried that the perceived attitude of the CEng approach may put off - in our example - potential IT engineers from joining the profession, my experience is it just puts them off registering for CEng! That said, I do think it is bad thing if CEng / IEng are reflecting a narrow arbitrary standard rather than actual engineering excellence, but that's a different problem.
However I do see a subtle point in here, given how little schools careers departments know about engineering, they do to some extent rely on input from the PEIs. And if these present a misleading picture of the routes into an engineering career and the potential careers when you get there then that will, to some extent, seep through. So we do have to be careful, and I would be tempted to say that the fact that all the information about CEng / IEng suggests these are graduate only routes (see the many many questions about this on these forums!) gives a misleading impression to school children, Fortunately in all my considerable work in schools I don't think I've ever met a child, and very very few teachers, who've even heard of CEng (let alone IEng) so that's alright ???!!!???
I'd just like to give a slightly different slant on this - in my experience of working with schools (and, indeed, employers) I see two quite different approaches. One is, as you say, that engineering is an academic degree-based discipline. The other is that it is a practically based discipline. Some schools I have been involved with definitely guide their top streams into engineering, whereas - for example - the school my children attended very much had the attitude that if you were academic you went into science, if you weren't you went into engineering.
Which just goes to show that schools really don't understand the range of engineering careers around. But then neither do many engineers, so it's not surprising!
One difficulty I see us having is that the membership of PEIs deosn't necessarily give (in fact I believe doesn't give) an accurate perspective on the range of attributes or backgrounds of successful engineers. Those who join PEIs are a self-selecting minority which are likely to have their own biases. To give an idea of the sort of attitude I'm thinking of, there was a furious debate in Mensa a few years ago when members started suggest that the fact that there were far more male than female members "proved" that men had on average higher IQs than women. Completely missing the point that membership was a self selected group of 1.5% of those eligible to join. So all it actually proved was that more men than women were the type of person who joins Mensa.
So in a sense I'm not worried that the perceived attitude of the CEng approach may put off - in our example - potential IT engineers from joining the profession, my experience is it just puts them off registering for CEng! That said, I do think it is bad thing if CEng / IEng are reflecting a narrow arbitrary standard rather than actual engineering excellence, but that's a different problem.
However I do see a subtle point in here, given how little schools careers departments know about engineering, they do to some extent rely on input from the PEIs. And if these present a misleading picture of the routes into an engineering career and the potential careers when you get there then that will, to some extent, seep through. So we do have to be careful, and I would be tempted to say that the fact that all the information about CEng / IEng suggests these are graduate only routes (see the many many questions about this on these forums!) gives a misleading impression to school children, Fortunately in all my considerable work in schools I don't think I've ever met a child, and very very few teachers, who've even heard of CEng (let alone IEng) so that's alright ???!!!???
