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Calvin Asks: How can I keep my daughter inspired in engineering subjects?

My daughter is 11 and loves all things STEM! However they don’t do a lot of science at school and I want to make sure she stays interested in the subject.

I am clueless about engineering and I was hoping to get some advice about interesting activities to inspire her.

I'm a single mum and money is tight, so big expensive things are out – any suggestions on what I can do?

Looking for inspiration - Brighton

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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Arran,

I warmly welcome someone taking a sociological perspective and your characterisation of engineering as mostly a “fraternity”, seems reasonable. Perhaps a number of different fraternities, which are partly social-class based?

I began my career as an apprentice and was quickly recruited into the Electrician’s Trades Union (EETPU), my organisation was a closed-shop where membership was a requirement and engineers had a different Union (The Electrical Power Engineers Association EPEA). I transferred when I was promoted from “Industrial” (weekly paid “blue-collar”) to “technical staff” (monthly paid –“white collar”). I first joined the IEETE (now IET) in the hope of it helping me progress, but transferred to the ASEE (now also IET) when I had, because it was included in my EPEA subscription. However sometime soon after, Engineering Council banned Trades Union activity amongst institutions, resulting in IIExE (now IET). A small but significant proportion of engineers were IEE/IMechE (or other niche chartered institutions), mostly from the time when HNC+ endorsements or institution exams were acceptable, but also having been sponsored through university, or recruited as graduates.

Something similar was the experience of many engineers and technicians in large (often nationalised, including armed forces) industries until the 1990s. In another thread, Andy Millar used the term “paternalistic” and I think that is an apt one. Women were rare and only at strategic level would the occasional “posh accent” be found. To illustrate, circa 25 years ago I carried out a debrief of senior engineers and managers following an IEE accreditation visit to our flagship plant (now a PLC itself), the first instinct of several present was to mock the visitors as “posh and out of touch”, with a comment like “where did they find that lot”. Similar comments have been made in these forums, usually something like “old boys” and I may have even cited “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” myself in a lighter vein. For context the visit was in Yorkshire and the intent wasn’t actually hostile. Certainly not as difficult as dealing with the first gender transition situation, around the same time!

Without some sort of empirical research, I couldn’t give much credance your 12 factors, but they are an interesting perspective, based I assume on your direct personal experience and/or perhaps some supposition? Although I would characterise the majority of Chartered Engineers as somewhat “conservative”, this would probably be true of all chartered professionals. In fact thanks to Monty Python, Ask The Family and two seemingly very “square” Chartered Engineer uncles, this definitely wouldn’t have appealed to my teenage sensibilities. http://www.montypython.net/scripts/vocation.php . I cannot remember ever encountering any “opinion” from an engineer in the workplace about Israel and only one who was a Christian Evangelist at work? Many workplaces contain a mix of institution members and those who are not. You would often be very hard pressed to spot the difference. However within the fraternity itself, division becomes important and almost at times the main raison d’etre. There are train spotters who obsess about every difference and people who are just interested in railways.

I haven’t brought ethnicity into this because I don’t think that it is now a significant issue in UK engineering, separate to social class and educational opportunities. Obviously some groups in society are socially disadvantaged, including many from a White British heritage and I’m not suggesting that there are no issues. However, I would be surprised and outraged to discover any recent evidence of racism within our professional community.

For the avoidance of drifting off topic, there are other types of work that are female dominated and where a “sorority” or “female club” is predominant. Some of those fought hard to become seen as “graduate professions” rather than “vocations”. An interesting case-study would be “Personnel Management”. Partly by chance I migrated into this area, initially through technical training. Senior figures were nearly all male either having followed a technical pathway like mine, or were seasoned veterans of negotiations with powerful Trades Unions. Females from administrative or welfare type backgrounds had good responsible jobs, but with a “glass ceiling”. As of 2017 membership of The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD of which I am a Fellow) is 80% female and although the balance is different at the most senior levels, HR often offers the best pathway for a female to reach director level. https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/long-reads/articles/hr-gender-challenge .

This leads me on to what I think is the most important issue around which we need consensus and leadership. Who do we wish to see recognised and nurtured by our professional community 10+ years into the future?

Many incumbent Chartered Engineers would aspire towards parity of esteem in society with medical doctors. This seems to me an unlikely prospect. An obvious parallel would be the differences between a “Doctor” and Nurse, the latter being a female dominated role, held in high public affection, but also seen as being “of lower rank” (like we see our own IEng). Medical doctors are divided in various ways, but all are generally held in high esteem. More realistic comparisons might be roles such as architects, surveyors, managers (various) and accountants, which overlap to some extent with engineering? Is there something to learn from the mainly Social Science based HR profession, or from areas that favour Biology as their main underlying science? There also seem superficially at least to be plenty of female mathematicians, astronomers or astrophysicists etc?

We can all as individuals all exercise our influence, but as the IET collective, we aslo find ourselves the largest member of a parliament consisting of Engineering Council as the standards regulator. It is charged with setting standards for all practitioners from the threshold of Technician, but is in practice a Chartered Engineer’s Council. We also have Engineering UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering , who advocate engineering in different ways, but with a similar remit. It seems from my perspective that the battle against sexism at this level has long been won , but clearly this triumvirate have not engaged that successfully with the majority of practitioners and employers. Progress in gender equality, especially for the academically adept has perhaps come at the expense of portraying those with a more practical approach as being “oily-rag”, “hard-hat” and “sub-standard” relative to chartered recognition. So arguably engineering as an engine of social mobility has stalled or even reversed?

We can only operate in the social environment that we find ourselves, but we have choices, such as for example; should technicians have their own council? I don’t advocate this, because it would probably just turn a one-sided dysfunctional competition into a more equal one, with no overall benefit. Are engineering careers “progressive” or “siloed”? We used to say siloed and allow a bit of progression, now we say progressive, but have done little to enable this in the decade since it was first adopted. These forums are testament to the many highly experienced and often well-qualified engineers considered “not-chartered” and the statistics testament to those who don’t see the benefit in trying.

Large parts of IT and/or Computer Science would fall within our IET footprint.

Your comment. Not to the same degree as engineering. It's quite common to find IT and software developer types who come from lower class or non-technical family backgrounds; did not do well at school and / or did not enjoy school; have more diverse religious and political views; and dare I say, have been to jail. Is your characterisation of this territory a reasonable one? I have limited experience in this area, but don’t particularly recognise this description.

Legislation was enacted long ago to protect those who may have committed minor offences from unreasonable disadvantage in employment and to aid the rehabilitation of more serious offenders who may have served custodial sentences. Petty crime, anti-social behaviour, teenage gang territories etc, were endemic in an area close to where I grew up, although serious drug problems came slightly later. It was incredibly easy to be drawn into these activities, but luckily I stayed on the periphery of the worst bits and therefore out of jail. Perhaps the better company I found as Junior Captain of my local Rowing Club was a useful counterbalance? My apprenticeship got me away from of it, for a cousin it was the Army, someone else a few years younger (slightly too young to be a contemporary – thankfully!) became a World Boxing Champion. Jeremy Corbyn is too old to have been a contemporary, but was on “the other side of the tracks” at a Grammar School a few miles away. According to your hypothesis he would be unwelcome in our club, although his father and a brother were engineers and another brother was a scientist, all of some distinction.

Do we have an IT professional wanting to comment?

Just to reiterate the question as I interpreted it was; why do teenage girls lose interest in an Engineering and Technology Career?

I think that this is a very important issue, but one that cannot be disconnected, from issues of classism and social mobility. I have found myself in situations of enhanced sensitivity to these issues, initially when I realised that even degree qualified and highly skilled technical professionals who I managed, were being considered “second class” . I then discovered that the pathway that I followed to registration as a professional engineer (IEng) by the age of 27, institution fellowship and a chartered “management” career, was also now considered a “second class” one. Only very recently for example, some people within the IET decided that people like me (IEng) should be considered unsuitable to mentor a prospective Chartered Engineer and I had to fight a rear-guard action (not for myself) to overturn this crass action. The Chief Executive of Network Rail had to call for an end to the Stigma around apprenticeships. Even the Uff report talked about snobbery being prevalent.

Therefore, on behalf of mainstream professional engineers of graduate calibre, of any gender or from any social background and especially those drawn from the apprenticeship tradition; can we have our proper measure of respect back please, from the petty snobs and elitists? They claim the cloak of “high standards”, but sometimes barely understand the practicalities of engineering as carried out by highly trained and skilled people themselves.

https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/female-engineering-apprentices-are-not-a-breed-apart
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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Arran,

I warmly welcome someone taking a sociological perspective and your characterisation of engineering as mostly a “fraternity”, seems reasonable. Perhaps a number of different fraternities, which are partly social-class based?

I began my career as an apprentice and was quickly recruited into the Electrician’s Trades Union (EETPU), my organisation was a closed-shop where membership was a requirement and engineers had a different Union (The Electrical Power Engineers Association EPEA). I transferred when I was promoted from “Industrial” (weekly paid “blue-collar”) to “technical staff” (monthly paid –“white collar”). I first joined the IEETE (now IET) in the hope of it helping me progress, but transferred to the ASEE (now also IET) when I had, because it was included in my EPEA subscription. However sometime soon after, Engineering Council banned Trades Union activity amongst institutions, resulting in IIExE (now IET). A small but significant proportion of engineers were IEE/IMechE (or other niche chartered institutions), mostly from the time when HNC+ endorsements or institution exams were acceptable, but also having been sponsored through university, or recruited as graduates.

Something similar was the experience of many engineers and technicians in large (often nationalised, including armed forces) industries until the 1990s. In another thread, Andy Millar used the term “paternalistic” and I think that is an apt one. Women were rare and only at strategic level would the occasional “posh accent” be found. To illustrate, circa 25 years ago I carried out a debrief of senior engineers and managers following an IEE accreditation visit to our flagship plant (now a PLC itself), the first instinct of several present was to mock the visitors as “posh and out of touch”, with a comment like “where did they find that lot”. Similar comments have been made in these forums, usually something like “old boys” and I may have even cited “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” myself in a lighter vein. For context the visit was in Yorkshire and the intent wasn’t actually hostile. Certainly not as difficult as dealing with the first gender transition situation, around the same time!

Without some sort of empirical research, I couldn’t give much credance your 12 factors, but they are an interesting perspective, based I assume on your direct personal experience and/or perhaps some supposition? Although I would characterise the majority of Chartered Engineers as somewhat “conservative”, this would probably be true of all chartered professionals. In fact thanks to Monty Python, Ask The Family and two seemingly very “square” Chartered Engineer uncles, this definitely wouldn’t have appealed to my teenage sensibilities. http://www.montypython.net/scripts/vocation.php . I cannot remember ever encountering any “opinion” from an engineer in the workplace about Israel and only one who was a Christian Evangelist at work? Many workplaces contain a mix of institution members and those who are not. You would often be very hard pressed to spot the difference. However within the fraternity itself, division becomes important and almost at times the main raison d’etre. There are train spotters who obsess about every difference and people who are just interested in railways.

I haven’t brought ethnicity into this because I don’t think that it is now a significant issue in UK engineering, separate to social class and educational opportunities. Obviously some groups in society are socially disadvantaged, including many from a White British heritage and I’m not suggesting that there are no issues. However, I would be surprised and outraged to discover any recent evidence of racism within our professional community.

For the avoidance of drifting off topic, there are other types of work that are female dominated and where a “sorority” or “female club” is predominant. Some of those fought hard to become seen as “graduate professions” rather than “vocations”. An interesting case-study would be “Personnel Management”. Partly by chance I migrated into this area, initially through technical training. Senior figures were nearly all male either having followed a technical pathway like mine, or were seasoned veterans of negotiations with powerful Trades Unions. Females from administrative or welfare type backgrounds had good responsible jobs, but with a “glass ceiling”. As of 2017 membership of The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD of which I am a Fellow) is 80% female and although the balance is different at the most senior levels, HR often offers the best pathway for a female to reach director level. https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/long-reads/articles/hr-gender-challenge .

This leads me on to what I think is the most important issue around which we need consensus and leadership. Who do we wish to see recognised and nurtured by our professional community 10+ years into the future?

Many incumbent Chartered Engineers would aspire towards parity of esteem in society with medical doctors. This seems to me an unlikely prospect. An obvious parallel would be the differences between a “Doctor” and Nurse, the latter being a female dominated role, held in high public affection, but also seen as being “of lower rank” (like we see our own IEng). Medical doctors are divided in various ways, but all are generally held in high esteem. More realistic comparisons might be roles such as architects, surveyors, managers (various) and accountants, which overlap to some extent with engineering? Is there something to learn from the mainly Social Science based HR profession, or from areas that favour Biology as their main underlying science? There also seem superficially at least to be plenty of female mathematicians, astronomers or astrophysicists etc?

We can all as individuals all exercise our influence, but as the IET collective, we aslo find ourselves the largest member of a parliament consisting of Engineering Council as the standards regulator. It is charged with setting standards for all practitioners from the threshold of Technician, but is in practice a Chartered Engineer’s Council. We also have Engineering UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering , who advocate engineering in different ways, but with a similar remit. It seems from my perspective that the battle against sexism at this level has long been won , but clearly this triumvirate have not engaged that successfully with the majority of practitioners and employers. Progress in gender equality, especially for the academically adept has perhaps come at the expense of portraying those with a more practical approach as being “oily-rag”, “hard-hat” and “sub-standard” relative to chartered recognition. So arguably engineering as an engine of social mobility has stalled or even reversed?

We can only operate in the social environment that we find ourselves, but we have choices, such as for example; should technicians have their own council? I don’t advocate this, because it would probably just turn a one-sided dysfunctional competition into a more equal one, with no overall benefit. Are engineering careers “progressive” or “siloed”? We used to say siloed and allow a bit of progression, now we say progressive, but have done little to enable this in the decade since it was first adopted. These forums are testament to the many highly experienced and often well-qualified engineers considered “not-chartered” and the statistics testament to those who don’t see the benefit in trying.

Large parts of IT and/or Computer Science would fall within our IET footprint.

Your comment. Not to the same degree as engineering. It's quite common to find IT and software developer types who come from lower class or non-technical family backgrounds; did not do well at school and / or did not enjoy school; have more diverse religious and political views; and dare I say, have been to jail. Is your characterisation of this territory a reasonable one? I have limited experience in this area, but don’t particularly recognise this description.

Legislation was enacted long ago to protect those who may have committed minor offences from unreasonable disadvantage in employment and to aid the rehabilitation of more serious offenders who may have served custodial sentences. Petty crime, anti-social behaviour, teenage gang territories etc, were endemic in an area close to where I grew up, although serious drug problems came slightly later. It was incredibly easy to be drawn into these activities, but luckily I stayed on the periphery of the worst bits and therefore out of jail. Perhaps the better company I found as Junior Captain of my local Rowing Club was a useful counterbalance? My apprenticeship got me away from of it, for a cousin it was the Army, someone else a few years younger (slightly too young to be a contemporary – thankfully!) became a World Boxing Champion. Jeremy Corbyn is too old to have been a contemporary, but was on “the other side of the tracks” at a Grammar School a few miles away. According to your hypothesis he would be unwelcome in our club, although his father and a brother were engineers and another brother was a scientist, all of some distinction.

Do we have an IT professional wanting to comment?

Just to reiterate the question as I interpreted it was; why do teenage girls lose interest in an Engineering and Technology Career?

I think that this is a very important issue, but one that cannot be disconnected, from issues of classism and social mobility. I have found myself in situations of enhanced sensitivity to these issues, initially when I realised that even degree qualified and highly skilled technical professionals who I managed, were being considered “second class” . I then discovered that the pathway that I followed to registration as a professional engineer (IEng) by the age of 27, institution fellowship and a chartered “management” career, was also now considered a “second class” one. Only very recently for example, some people within the IET decided that people like me (IEng) should be considered unsuitable to mentor a prospective Chartered Engineer and I had to fight a rear-guard action (not for myself) to overturn this crass action. The Chief Executive of Network Rail had to call for an end to the Stigma around apprenticeships. Even the Uff report talked about snobbery being prevalent.

Therefore, on behalf of mainstream professional engineers of graduate calibre, of any gender or from any social background and especially those drawn from the apprenticeship tradition; can we have our proper measure of respect back please, from the petty snobs and elitists? They claim the cloak of “high standards”, but sometimes barely understand the practicalities of engineering as carried out by highly trained and skilled people themselves.

https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/female-engineering-apprentices-are-not-a-breed-apart
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Calvin Asks: How can I keep my daughter inspired in engineering subjects?

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