Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 58 replies
  • Subscribers 14 subscribers
  • Views 4470 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Engineers who did not enjoy school - are they rare?

Arran Cameron
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.
  • 0

    Andy Millar:

    please note I fully agree that schools aren't doing everything they could to help develop social and team skills, so let's change them so they do.




    Major reforms to the curriculum are easier said than done. It's obvious but unobvious that teachers can only teach what they know. If you don't know something then you can't teach it.


    There certainly are plenty of parents who favour that secondary schools move away from academics and more towards life skills and social skills. Some even go as far as saying that the only exams that students should take are basic English, maths, and science that are no more complicated than the KS2 SATS in order to confirm that they are not functionally illiterate or innumerate. Everybody will be expected to pass the exam.

  • 0
    I wrote this last evening in response to Arran’s beginning There may be plenty of truth to this but bear in mind that schools don’t actually teach social skills  but I wasn’t able to post

     

    An interesting perspective Arran, a little provocative perhaps, but with at least a ring of truth in much of it.

     

    I have little recent direct experience of schools except for recruiting and training school leavers and being on “Investors In People” panels until about 10 years ago. However, my mother was a Junior and Infant School Teacher, who trained at Teacher Training College after the war and was stood in front of 40+ children in rubble strewn Salford by the time she was 20. Escaping to the country, being a local school teacher was an important position in the community, where she would have considered the open expression of party political affiliations “unprofessional”.  In an interesting parallel with the engineering profession by the time she retired early, some would have dubbed her an “unqualified teacher”. After all if academic snobbery isn’t going to exist in education then where would it?  The sociology (aka politics) of schools and academic environments is interesting and you make valid observations.

     

    Although I went into an engineering career, some Sociology teachers who perhaps fitted your stereotype could inspire more interest than the stuffy disciplinarians in “harder” subjects, who tended to inspire rebelliousness instead. Discipline of the time emphasised physical prowess, enforced formally by corporal punishment, or within the (all important) peer group other forms of violence. What social skills that did emerge were accidental, although many would testify to the benefits of “clowning around”.  

     

    As an Apprentice in heavy industry my colleagues and I used to sit on our workbenches at break times with our Tea Sandwiches and reading material. On my day at college for HNC, I spotted this in the library.   https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Social_Psychology_of_Organizations.html?id=8RRHAAAAMAAJ

    So I borrowed it and started reading it a lunch time, cue the usual “banter”.  When 15 years later I enrolled on an MSc it was number one on the recommended reading list.

     

    I’m sorry if my story seems self-indulgent, but I hope that it informs others about the influences behind my (tentative) conclusions.

     
    • Unless someone acquires fundamental numeracy and literacy early, then much of teenage education is wasted and is just “childminding”.

    • Testing at an early age might focus attention, but dysfunctionally also creates fear, failure and an exam factory mentality at the expense of curiosity and a love of learning.

    • Some young people may (perhaps due to a condition like dyslexia) struggle to gain functional literacy and numeracy, but every remedial effort should be made.  

    • Each young person has a different talents, aptitude or potential to succeed in different ways. They will also have different motivations derived from their personality and key influences. These traits are not fixed but emergent. The system generally and individual teachers need flexibility to nurture what emerges. Parents (or equivalent) also have a role.

    • Engineering and Technology careers in particular illustrate well how opportunities for learning can be life-long. Regulators under the influence of academics and for bureaucratic convenience favour “deep theory first”, but experienced practitioners often illustrate a more flexible mix of applications supported by necessary and more modest theory.

    • A significant range of latent talents such as sport, entertainment, practical skills and entrepreneurialism for example, tend to be poorly served by school academic syllabuses.  

    • “Social Skills” and the acquisition of social capital (aka connections) are the main reasons why people invest significant sums in private education. Academic selection and focus (e.g. Grammar Schools) can achieve similar if not higher attainment in “academic” subjects.  Based on a relatively small sample of acquaintances over the years, both Eton and Millfield spring to mind as different but equally admirable?                                  

  • 0

    Roy Bowdler:



    • “Social Skills” and the acquisition of social capital (aka connections) are the main reasons why people invest significant sums in private education. Academic selection and focus (e.g. Grammar Schools) can achieve similar if not higher attainment in “academic” subjects.  Based on a relatively small sample of acquaintances over the years, both Eton and Millfield spring to mind as different but equally admirable?                                  



    While I've got a couple of minutes on the train, I want to very strongly support this point. My experience has been that (in a business context) those who have been to private and public schools have, on average, much better social and communication skills than those who have been to state schools.. Which to me goes to show that it can be done - so PLEASE let's get state schools up towards that same level!


    I still vividly remember judging an Engineering Education Scheme day, with three teams of sixth formers: one from a comprehensive, one from a grammar school, and one from a private school. Technically their projects were totally comparable in quality and scope. But when they came to give presentations - it was pure stereotype. The private school group knew exactly what they were going to say and how they were going to say it, and they knew the background so they weren't thrown by questions. Most of all they had confidence. The grammar school group gave an adequate but slightly boring presentation. The comprehensive school group were - frankly - all over the place and very badly prepared: very, very frustrating and unnecessary.


    That said, my own children went to the local comp, but do actually have excellent presentation skills (much better than mine!). I think this is partly down to the extraordinary (state) primary school they attended, and also because they did a lot of drama and music.


    Another thought, I think the most important thing for engineers is to realise that adequate social and communication skills can be learnt to a level sufficient to operate successfully in a modern engineering team and project environment. These are not set in stone at 18 (or whatever age) for the rest of your life. Of course this does involve the engineer in question recognising that they have a problem in the first place - most of us will have come across the type of engineer who believes that they are brilliant at communication and teamwork (and, indeed, everything else) and cannot understand why no-one else wants to work with them - and often why they keep getting made redundant. (Personally I started from a pretty low level, and am very much still learning.)


    And finally, I had a thought overnight on the litmus test for all this - which I certainly failed the first time around. My first project management role was to go off to a site installation project and get it finished. I found the two wiremen there had found they were on a nice little crib, all expenses paid in a nice part of the country, a friendly local barmaid who'd give them blank receipts, they were very happy to spin this out for as long as possible. (Their work was technically excellent, I suspect that 30 years later some of it is still in place, but way too slow.) As I rapidly found, despite extensive use of simile, metaphor, probably even litote, A level standard English was no help whatsoever in motivating them to finish the job in something approaching time! That's the difference between language and communication. (And, in hindsight, also an excellent example of bad management - I should never have been sent there without further development.)


    Well that's odd, I seem to be going through Swindon, I have absolutely no idea why. Blessed rail engineers wink


    Cheers,


    Andy

  • 0

    Arran Cameron:



    Major reforms to the curriculum are easier said than done.



    Hmmm...as a parent of two recent school leavers, a school governor for 9 years, and a very active STEM Ambassador for 17 years I'd suggest that if there's one thing successive UK governments (of all colours) have proved over the last 20-30 years it's that major reforms to the curriculum - and, indeed, the whole role of schools -  can be done year after year! I'd better not go further else I'll start getting political.


    The state school system is continuously evolving, changing, and developing, so giving that development a nudge in any particular direction is always possible. Which many involved in STEM education support - including the IET - are very actively doing.


    Thanks,


    Andy


    P.S. If you can teach engineers presentation and communication skills, and how to pass these on - which you definitely can - then it will also be possible to teach these to teachers. It's a case of seeing it as a problem and wanting to change it.

  • 0

    Andy Millar:  



    While I've got a couple of minutes on the train, I want to very strongly support this point. My experience has been that (in a business context) those who have been to private and public schools have, on average, much better social and communication skills than those who have been to state schools.. Which to me goes to show that it can be done - so PLEASE let's get state schools up towards that same level!


    Alternatively, a higher proportion of people who have attended private schools have parents who are in a better position to teach social and communication skills for life as an adult than people who attended state schools due to their parents having better social skills and knowledge of etiquette themselves. Children don't stop learning outside of school. They learn things from their own families as well. It's a known fact that there are a higher proportion of children from dysfunctional families at state schools than private schools. In fact, private schools have been known to regularly reject children who apply that come from single parent families, have parents in what they deem less than impressive occupations, or even live in certain postcodes, because they suspect that they are from a lower than desired social set. In contrast state schools are having to pick up the pieces from dysfuctional families and bad parenting for hundreds of thousands of children, as well as having large numbers of children starting who hardly know a word of English.


    Inside sources have revealed that independent schools are poorer at teaching life skills and social skills than most state schools are. Children are just expected to meet a minimum standard along with holding a sufficient knowledge about things people in at least socioeconomic group B should know - like types of wine or highbrow arts. If they don't meet the standards socially then no SEN services are available, so it's OUT!
  • 0
    Arran,

    Very good point, but as Andy said in a different post, it is actually more complicated than that. I agree that the home environment makes a difference, but I would like to chip in with some personal experience. My daughter was at the local primary school and, as my wife and I were both working, was then picked up by a childminder who looked after her until one of us was able to get home to pick her up. There was also a nearby boarding school and the fees for having her as a Day Boarder (i.e. attending potentially from 7a.m. to 7p.m. and doing her homework in the school with help from teachers) was no more expensive than the childminder. When she was old enough to start there (Year 3) we therefore moved her there, gaining fantastic school facilities such as swimming pool, horse riding and a vast range of sports in the process, but we noticed within a year that her confidence and social skills had blossomed, far more than just one year older could explain. The home environment had not changed. so that only leaves the school environment to explain the boost.

    By the way, I am curious about children holding sufficient knowledge about types of wine that you mention in your final paragraph. Is this something you feel should be taught in state schools?

    Also for the benefit of any American readers we should point out that in the UK, Public Schools are very much in the private sector and not the same as Public Schools in USA.

    Alasdair
  • 0

    Alasdair Anderson:

    Arran,

    Very good point, but as Andy said in a different post, it is actually more complicated than that. I agree that the home environment makes a difference, but I would like to chip in with some personal experience. My daughter was at the local primary school and, as my wife and I were both working, was then picked up by a childminder who looked after her until one of us was able to get home to pick her up. There was also a nearby boarding school and the fees for having her as a Day Boarder (i.e. attending potentially from 7a.m. to 7p.m. and doing her homework in the school with help from teachers) was no more expensive than the childminder. When she was old enough to start there (Year 3) we therefore moved her there, gaining fantastic school facilities such as swimming pool, horse riding and a vast range of sports in the process, but we noticed within a year that her confidence and social skills had blossomed, far more than just one year older could explain. The home environment had not changed. so that only leaves the school environment to explain the boost.




    I can well believe that. People are shaped by the people who they associate with. Children who associate with people with good social skills and high moral standards tend to acquire them - as long as they meet a minimum standard to start with and the social gap between them and their peers is not too large as to cause potential incompatibilities such as coming from a dysfunctional family, clashes of culture, or unusual psychological conditions like Asperger syndrome. Children who associate with riff-raff almost always end up as riff-raff themselves.


    Large numbers of parents want their children to attend private schools, not because the quality of the academic education is any higher or the facilities for activities are better than at state schools, but in order that they mix with kids from decent families and not riff-raff. 


    A bit like if you work in a perfumery you end up smelling of perfume but if you work in a forge you end up smelling of smoke.




    By the way, I am curious about children holding sufficient knowledge about types of wine that you mention in your final paragraph. Is this something you feel should be taught in state schools?




    To help differentiate between children who come from higher socioeconomic group families and which children are clever but uncultured council estate kids who ace the maths and English entrance exams!


    Some home educating parents (even from poorer or lower class backgrounds) I have met have mentioned that it's a good idea for their children to learn cultural stuff often known by families from higher class backgrounds and a bit of Latin as it will help them with career development by making them appear to come from a higher class background than they actually do. Social class is more a case of culture and attitudes than your family's background or financial status. I think successive governments have failed to notice this when carrying out educational reforms. Academics aren't everything and social skills do include knowing which wine to pair with which food. 


    BTW I don't drink wine or know much about it. 


  • 0
    I looked up how my old school was doing. Some of its catchment includes disadvantaged areas and a significant effort has been made in recent years under the “Academy” banner. They state “52% of students leave with a 4 (C Grade) or better in both English and Maths” . 

     

    Although I couldn’t gain an accurate picture about apprenticeships, 8% seemed to take one ( I think at age 16) with 86% continuing in full-time education. I wasn’t able to glean how many took an apprenticeship at 18. However from an estimated 25 students leaving at 18 for university, only 1 seems to have chosen Engineering, which was an Engineering and Applied Science Foundation programme at Aston, so I looked that up as well. This seems like a good option for someone who perhaps hasn’t been an academic “star” for any number of reasons, or able to pick up a higher or degree apprenticeship, but is interested in engineering and capable of getting a degree within 4 years. This raised the question in my mind about why this type of Student, highly likely to be from a less advantaged background, was subjected to the same tuition fees £9.250 PA  as someone going to Oxbridge.

     

    Perhaps those who represent the engineering profession have been too focussed on lauding the latter (deservedly so) rather than nurturing the former? The person from my old school will probably prove to be an excellent engineer and value adding employee of the future, of the kind that we apparently lack in significant numbers and have to import. They are unlikely to have had the apprenticeship opportunities of my generation, coincidentally in my case thanks to the subject of another new thread, Power Generation using Coal (400+ good local jobs, 10+ apprenticeships each year) now zero. If they do find their way into the world of PEIs, I hope that they find a warm welcome rather than snobbery. After all, many of us have travelled a similar path!      

  • 0

    Roy Bowdler:



    • Unless someone acquires fundamental numeracy and literacy early, then much of teenage education is wasted and is just “childminding”.

    • Testing at an early age might focus attention, but dysfunctionally also creates fear, failure and an exam factory mentality at the expense of curiosity and a love of learning.

    • Some young people may (perhaps due to a condition like dyslexia) struggle to gain functional literacy and numeracy, but every remedial effort should be made.  

    • Each young person has a different talents, aptitude or potential to succeed in different ways. They will also have different motivations derived from their personality and key influences. These traits are not fixed but emergent. The system generally and individual teachers need flexibility to nurture what emerges. Parents (or equivalent) also have a role.

    • Engineering and Technology careers in particular illustrate well how opportunities for learning can be life-long. Regulators under the influence of academics and for bureaucratic convenience favour “deep theory first”, but experienced practitioners often illustrate a more flexible mix of applications supported by necessary and more modest theory.

    • A significant range of latent talents such as sport, entertainment, practical skills and entrepreneurialism for example, tend to be poorly served by school academic syllabuses.  

    • “Social Skills” and the acquisition of social capital (aka connections) are the main reasons why people invest significant sums in private education. Academic selection and focus (e.g. Grammar Schools) can achieve similar if not higher attainment in “academic” subjects.  Based on a relatively small sample of acquaintances over the years, both Eton and Millfield spring to mind as different but equally admirable?                                  

     




    I agree with this. What you have omitted, and it goes back to the OP, is anything about children who 'fail' at school socially:



    • Children who struggle badly with the social side of school or just don't fit in.

    • Children who are generally unpopular at school for reasons that they cannot understand or do anything about.

    • Children who fail to make any friends at school.

    • Children who are not respected by or looked down on by their peer group or teachers.

    • Children who are excluded from social activities - like never given the prominent roles in school plays or invited to birthday parties etc.

    • Children who are bullied and victimised.

    • Children who say that they hate school or don't want to go to school because of social issues rather than academic issues.


    Completely regardless of their academic ability.


    Schools are generally not very good at providing help for children who are failing at school socially in a similar way to providing help for children who are failing at school academically. As I have previously stated, governments and university academics over the decades have focused their attention onto the academic side of school whilst largely overlooking the social sides of school. It has sadly been commonplace to blame parents if their children fail at school socially for not bringing them up properly but in reality many children who fail at school socially come from stable and caring families.


    I have wondered for many years why some children are significantly more popular at school than others, and what makes them popular.
  • 0

    Andy Millar:



    Another thought, I think the most important thing for engineers is to realise that adequate social and communication skills can be learnt to a level sufficient to operate successfully in a modern engineering team and project environment. These are not set in stone at 18 (or whatever age) for the rest of your life. Of course this does involve the engineer in question recognising that they have a problem in the first place - most of us will have come across the type of engineer who believes that they are brilliant at communication and teamwork (and, indeed, everything else) and cannot understand why no-one else wants to work with them - and often why they keep getting made redundant. (Personally I started from a pretty low level, and am very much still learning.)


    How exactly can, or should, people learn social and communication skills - to a level sufficient to operate successfully in a modern engineering team and project environment?


    Andy Millar:



    P.S. If you can teach engineers presentation and communication skills, and how to pass these on - which you definitely can - then it will also be possible to teach these to teachers. It's a case of seeing it as a problem and wanting to change it.


    What do you think of kids who produce videos and run their own YouTube channels?


    A point that I raised more than once whilst I was at school was why do schools make kids produce so much written work but video production is not part of the curriculum despite it being a multibillion pound industry? My comments were met with bewilderment by the teachers who struggled to think beyond the confines of pen pushing or realise the power and potential of video productions presumably because it didn't fit into the curriculum at the time.


    Would it be more beneficial for kids to spend more time making videos on their smartphones then uploading them to YouTube than swotting over their homework? 
     

Community Rules & Guidelines