Engineers who did not enjoy school - are they rare?

Andy Millar:


Regarding which social skills are essential to an effective engineering team (although not necessarily to all individual engineers within that team), I would start the list with effective communication (speaking, writing and - most of all - listening), appreciation of others expertise and correct positioning of your expertise with theirs, sensitivity to others circumstances - including the fact that these may change year-by-year, day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour, willingness to admit mistakes, willingness to accept others mistakes, mutual respect, assertiveness (there's huge amounts underneath this one - but lots about it around), empathy (ditto). I'm sure others could add to the list.

There may be plenty of truth to this but bear in mind that schools don’t actually teach social skills. Schools were set up to teach academic subjects. The National Curriculum is almost entirely academic. Governments look at schools only from an academic perspective. Almost every educational reform over the decades is academic. Students are only evaluated in academic subjects, not social skills, when it comes to grades. School league tables are only derived from performance in academic subjects.


It’s important not to conflate social skills with discipline and conformity which many schools over the decades have taken delight in dishing out.


Teachers do not always have particularly good or desirable social skills for a life outside of teaching. Over the decades it has been noted that the attitudes, appearance, and political views of a substantial number of teachers would not go down well in many commercial institutions. The days of ILEA infested to the core with raving Marxists may be gone but teaching is still very much a parallel world to corporate life. A high proportion of teachers have gone to school, then teacher training college, then back to school again without anything more than the merest glimpses of employment outside of school and the social skills that are required there as opposed to a school environment. Teachers often have tendency to socialise with teachers more often than non-teachers and marry other teachers. It is not unknown for teachers who enter teaching in middle age after a career in industry to be distrusted, or even bullied by, other teachers because of cliquiness or differences between their cultural mindsets due to the different pathways that they have taken in life.


Although it comes across as paradoxical, one common reason why parents choose to home educate is to provide their children with more time and better opportunities to learn social skills for life as an adult than if they attended school.

Andy Millar:


Regarding which social skills are essential to an effective engineering team (although not necessarily to all individual engineers within that team), I would start the list with effective communication (speaking, writing and - most of all - listening), appreciation of others expertise and correct positioning of your expertise with theirs, sensitivity to others circumstances - including the fact that these may change year-by-year, day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour, willingness to admit mistakes, willingness to accept others mistakes, mutual respect, assertiveness (there's huge amounts underneath this one - but lots about it around), empathy (ditto). I'm sure others could add to the list.

There may be plenty of truth to this but bear in mind that schools don’t actually teach social skills. Schools were set up to teach academic subjects. The National Curriculum is almost entirely academic. Governments look at schools only from an academic perspective. Almost every educational reform over the decades is academic. Students are only evaluated in academic subjects, not social skills, when it comes to grades. School league tables are only derived from performance in academic subjects.


It’s important not to conflate social skills with discipline and conformity which many schools over the decades have taken delight in dishing out.


Teachers do not always have particularly good or desirable social skills for a life outside of teaching. Over the decades it has been noted that the attitudes, appearance, and political views of a substantial number of teachers would not go down well in many commercial institutions. The days of ILEA infested to the core with raving Marxists may be gone but teaching is still very much a parallel world to corporate life. A high proportion of teachers have gone to school, then teacher training college, then back to school again without anything more than the merest glimpses of employment outside of school and the social skills that are required there as opposed to a school environment. Teachers often have tendency to socialise with teachers more often than non-teachers and marry other teachers. It is not unknown for teachers who enter teaching in middle age after a career in industry to be distrusted, or even bullied by, other teachers because of cliquiness or differences between their cultural mindsets due to the different pathways that they have taken in life.


Although it comes across as paradoxical, one common reason why parents choose to home educate is to provide their children with more time and better opportunities to learn social skills for life as an adult than if they attended school.