”
Engineers remain hot in job market
”
averred the headline in the business section of Tuesday’s
Dispatch, and I deliberately left the paper where it would catch
the eyes of my husband, an engineer, and our daughter, who is going
to CalPoly this fall to study engineering.
“Engineers remain hot in job market” averred the headline in the business section of Tuesday’s Dispatch, and I deliberately left the paper where it would catch the eyes of my husband, an engineer, and our daughter, who is going to CalPoly this fall to study engineering.
Good news for our family, bad news for our society: we are not raising enough engineers to fill America’s engineering jobs. We import engineers from India and Singapore on HB visas, we outsource jobs to India and Taiwan, and still the problem looms: the baby boomers are beginning to retire, and we have not raised enough engineers to replace them.
Now, I have done my part: I have raised two engineers and an artist. Our eldest, with his BS in mechanical engineering, is learning how to fly helicopters in the Air Force. He credits his engineering training for his ability to calculate emergency landings in his head, also with the deep understanding he has for the physical forces at work on his helo.
Our middle son, age 21, has been supporting himself as an artist since he earned his BFA last year. He admits, diffidently, that he never uses calculus in his work. But he measures, he uses fractions, and, during college, he tutored trig and geometry for his spending money.
The common thread is that we have raised our kids to support themselves, and with the mathematical competence to do whatever they love.
The business article listed the 10 hardest jobs to fill worldwide: skilled manual trades, sales reps, technicians, engineers, management/executives, laborers, secretaries, drivers, accounting, and IT. Only four of these job areas require four years of college, but all require a work ethic.
The article concluded with some statements from a forum at the University of Wisconsin, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. We must act now, they said. Improve the nation’s approach toward educating and training workers, they said. Our education system requires deep and dramatic reform, said they. Our education system is fractured, and we must create multiple pathways to high school graduation, said one.
The article concludes with a statement from Sister Joel Read, past-president of Alverno College: “We tend to take things for granted, and we get stuck in things we are not able to move.”
I agree with Sister Joel on both points, but I think the panelists are stuck and taking things for granted. (I also think that panelist Emily DeRocco is deeply confused when she complains about the educational system being fractured, and in the next breath insists on multiple pathways to high school graduation. But I digress.)
The panelists are stuck on the idea that fixing the educational system will fix everything. They take 13 years of compulsory schooling for granted. They are stuck on the idea that more education will be better.
I think we are not raising enough engineers and machinists for three reasons. First, we are an incredibly affluent society, so we have been raising a lot of spoiled brats. Secondly, the reform math movement of the last 20 years has handicapped an entire generation with innumeracy. And last, we start school too early, and for many kids, continue it way too long.
Let me elaborate on that last point: compulsory attendance age in California is 6 to 18. Kindergarten is not compulsory, although the vast majority of California 5-year-olds do attend kindergarten.
There are constant efforts to extend compulsory schooling down to age 4 or 3, and more than half of pre-schoolers do spend their days in daycare.
But kids are not sufficiently mature to benefit from formal education until about age 8. So we water the material down and entertain them, and they continue to expect entertainment even after they are cognitively mature enough to have an attention span.
I also think we should let kids leave school and go into full time apprenticeship at 14. A motivated kid can learn enough reading, writing, and arithmetic to succeed in the skilled trades by age 14. Confining him behind a desk for an additional four years is a waste of resources. Keeping disruptive troublemakers in school hurts the learning environment for the students who do want to learn.
