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Teaching Fifth Graders Engineering
Jamie noticed a NYT story saying "To compete in a global economy, some school districts are offering engineering lessons to students in kindergarten. " The story is about 5th graders working on a new experimental curriculum that is well beyond the egg drop of old.
I remember the egg drop. We also built bridges out of popsicle sticks, and tested them to see which could hold the most weight. That was the most engineering related hands on project I think I had in all of elementary school.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
... but he couldn't teach kindergartners the concept of load bearing supports. I like the idea, and I applaud the encouragement of sciences etc in school but kindergarten, really?
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
It's great that schools are doing this, but I think parents are the biggest factor. Parents have a strong influence on the toys kids get at an early age, and at that early age children can show an interest in almost anything.
Want your kids to grow up with a healthy respect for / interest in engineering? Buy them Lego, Meccano (aka Erector Sets), K'Nex, etc... any toy that lets them play in a sandbox with minimal limitations, and particularly any toy that allows the creation of functioning mechanisms
Supplement this with some old hardware that they can take apart with only a screwdriver (and do it with them if they're too young to do it safely).
Computers and programming languages are also a great place to start, especially since the sandbox they provide allows easy experimentation (if you made an error, things don't blow up -- you can always reset and try again). However programming is arguably something that's best for slightly older children, whereas taking apart old mechanical/electrical hardware can be enjoyed by many children even as early as age 5 or before.
Of course this won't necessarily result in an engineer -- after all a child's interests can be largely determined by their personality, their school, and their social environment. However, by setting the foundations with these types of toys, your kid will at least have an understanding of engineering, which can only be beneficial. The fundamental point, I think, is that you can't just rely on schools -- as a parent you have to lay the foundations for learning (of any field or subject) at home, by spending time with your child and guiding them towards productive fun activities (and no, using the TV as a babysitter all the time will not accomplish this goal).
I'm not a parent yet, so I guess I'll see how well I do in this area when the time comes... However I do know what my parents did, and I think it worked pretty well
"And not a single house blew down."
That's an F for the testers, then.
I was the real korpiq until I woke up clowned.
1) Work harder than almost any other branch of schooling
2) Work for free on the evenings and weekends
3) Do things that no one cares about or appreciates
4) Life-long learning never stops, what about life?
5) Employment opportunities fall drastically after 35, you're too old
6) Watch engineering melt down and get exported to cheaper countries
7) Fuck it, go to law school
Back when I was in 6th grade (about 20 years ago) we did some engineering stuff, both mechanical as well as some electrical. I remember the most fun project was making our own remote control cars that had to battle it out. The intention was to see who could design the best car to push other cars out of the circle, but I remember my partner and I turned it into more of a battlebots experiment where we essentially had a drill on the front of our car to disable the other cars (most were made out of balsa wood). The trick was, we were limited to certain specs, including a max of 4 motors. Most people made the obvious 4 wheeled car, but we opted for a three wheel car that was nice and pointy with the "drill" on the front utilizing the fourth motor.
Fun times...
Nothing really new here. "Primitive" societies have involved children in engineering -- boatbuilding, weapons tech, housing construction, medicine, agriculture -- for millenia.
a kindergarten class on how to remotely manage outsourced labor?
Aren't 6-year-olds kinda old to be getting into IT anyway?
Obviously not something that would be done in school, but playing with firecrackers and other incendiary devices provided me with some engineering insights early on.
Sample objective: achieving maximum height of a projectile using an explosive propellant.
Lessons learned: 1) Use a seamless can (such as an empty butane canister), as normal cans would just blow apart. 2) Set canister in a basin of water to minimize energy loss, with firecracker suspended by the wick through a hole on top.
Results: A couple hundred meters altitude, incredibly low deviation from vertical.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
(Damnit, what is slashdot coming to?)
Anyways.... fifth graders are not in kindergarten (or at least, they damn well shouldn't be!)
At least the article was a lot less confusing by saying they are teaching it to levels from kindergarten through grade 5.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I like the overall idea, but I think they could introduce some "Mythbuster"-type experimentation. First it helps understand the "Hypothesis-Methodology-Test-Conclusion" scientific approach and it also encourages them to be critical of pre-conceived ideas.
Will we see more 5th graders "inventing" baking soda volcanoes, solar-powered flashlights, pedal-powered generators, lemon-powered batteries? But of course, we shouldn't forget the cardboard catapults or the salt crystal "jewelry". No doubt, these will save the world some day.
In the old days, you went to university at what - 14? However, very few went there.
The "problem" with this is that modern schooling of the social-democratic form has emphasised equality and coherence - hence, the class largely progresses for the first 10 years, up until you can get some differentiation, at the learning speed of the moderate-to-slow student. This is a conscious choice. Not to intentionally "keep people stupid", but because childhood is seen by many as a period to mess around and have fun and learn a bit, and by others that if you separated people in classes by ability it would be a gargantuan step towards a formalised "class system".
I remember in 4th grade, when I finished my class mathematics book in 2 months. What did they give me to do? Page upon page upon page (an I mean literally, something like 5 per maths hour) of questions that were of an IDENTICAL DIFFICULTY so that we wouldn't "progress beyond the rest of the class". One other person in the class was the same (and later ended up at Microsoft, a brilliant programmer but a social wreck), and we would compete for the number of sheets of identical-level calculations we could go through per hour. Not to mention, this caused a level of boredom and anguish at times which was a bit like getting stabbed in the eye and suffering literally a brain implosion, but it was all both planned and justified by the 'egalitarianism' perspective. I believe the US is different from Europe in that you have at least some form of 'bright students classes', whilst this is extremely rare in Europe.
So it's a tradeoff and a decision to make. Will you separate out the brighest students, give them more attention and better tutoring, with the hopes that they do great things for your nation? Or won't you? There are a large number of people in the academic world arguing for either.
Many people consider design of a one-off prototype as engineering, but often real engineering means creating something that can be manufactured, or creating something that can be very reliable, or creating something that can be made cheaply. I have met many PhD's in engineering that only prefer to make a single working prototype just like they did to get their "engineering" PhD. Sure, the technology is cool, but if the target application requires more than one, what good is it?
A particularly effective LEGO League coach, when handed a robot by erstwhile middle schoolers, proceeded to pull the robot horizonally. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Horizontal stresses."
If it held together, he nodded, then pulled the robot up and down. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Vertical stresses."
If the robot could handle stress, he asked to see what it could do on the scoring table.
He also made sure that there were cookies, sometimes, and drinks.
Good times, those.
Engineers don't work in factories, troll...
Engineers make the blueprints for things that are fabricated in factories.
People who work in factories are mostly drones or technicians at best (with an occasional engineer to oversee the manufacturing processes and plans for expansion). Working in fast food is almost equivalent to working as an assembly line worker.
When I was in grade 5, which was in the late 80ies, we were building lego technics robots and connecting them to Apple IIgs computers and controlling the motors with Apple Logo.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Probably should just teach them the languages of the countries were the engineering work will be done.
It will give them a head start for when they go there to look for work.
Being a technical person, I'm happy to see any attempt at showing students that science and engineering are interesting.
However, the reality is that there are only a few "growth" professions left on our side of the world:
Until "someine" stems the tide of outsourcing, and actually gets people to care about science and engineering again, very few students are going to pursue technical careers. I think it's sad, but the reality is that no one with any decision making authority respects job roles that aren't in the list above.
I don't mean to sound negative - I'd love to see a resurgence of smart, technically minded students come out of school and want to do interesting work. If there aren't jobs and opportunity though, what will come of this? It sucks fo rme too - in my mind people management = adult babysitting, and project management = checking boxes off a Gantt chart and endless begging of people to do things. Increasingly, it looks like that's what will be available to us techies in the future.
No, don't tell kids to invent useless products, sell lemonade, or deliver newspapers. Teach kids to become health inspectors who demand $10,000 fines from lemonade stands. Teach them to go door to door asking to sign petitions to stop delivery of unwanted "free" newspapers, to save the trees. If they must sell something, teach them to sell bottles of "eco" tap water for $10 each that somehow saves a starving child in Africa. Put a pink ribbon on a $1 box of cookies and sell them for $10, because it will save cancer victims. Have your vacation paid for by asking $1 for every mile you ride on your bicycle, because this goes to a good cause.
And complex constructions can be built from ideas.
For instance, ask the class what's is the largest parallelogram
(by the area) that can be cut out of a given triangle.
You give the students an opportunity to work hands-on learning about the real, physical world around them. You give them proper resources and competent instruction in something the kids can relate to, and you wind up with students who want to learn.
You don't get this by just hiring more generic teachers, or paying poorly-performing teachers more money. Yes, you will have to pay teachers more in order to get good ones, but that also means you have to be willing to fire the bad ones and the useless parts of the administration.
You don't get this by just buying computers or random "technology" for students and simply expecting that jsut "doing it on a computer" will suddenly make hard topics easy. Used properly, computers and other advanced tech can greatly improve understanding and retention of material by presenting it in ways students can better understand (with animations, visuals, interactivity, etc), but simply throwing text onto a screen instead of a piece of paper doesn't do it.
You don't get this by social promotion and concern over feelings and self-esteem above all else. The real outside world isn't nearly so nice. That's not to say you need to be a cold, uncaring brute (especially to younger kids), but there need to be gradually-increasing responsibilities and expectations as they get older, and they should be treated more and more like adults as they grow. They need to be challenged, not coddled.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
How long will it be before these children run into the Christofascist anti-science agenda. If we want our children to be rational thinkers, we need to keep them away from the fish people. We need engineers and scientists who can think critically, not people who think that a book written by ancient crazies has all the answers. "Keep your children away from the fish people." - Frank Zappa
Fifth graders are far too soft and slippy to make anything useful out of.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I mean Engineering is a professional job. Might as well have a doctor in and teach kids how to do a liver transplant. Then get sued for it when the kids attempt a real one and fail. :3 Stop groaning. You know it's true.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Good point. My brother the anthropologist (and parent of two boys) says much the same. He also says that what we call "multitasking" is not so different from what "primivitive" hunters do in the forest (keep alert to a million little details).
-kgj
Engineers don't work in factories, troll...
People who work in factories are mostly drones or technicians at best (with an occasional engineer to...
I don't think you wrote what you meant. Let me edit it for you: "Engineers don't work in factories, except for when they do. Thankyou very much for your input to the discussion, here ends my respectful reply."
Huh. I always thought the point of schooling was to prepare the students for professional jobs.
This is where BP's ideas are coming from
Uhmm, wow, quite the breath-taking swing of the logical generalization ax there man. As often happens though, this produces nothing but disconnected bullshit. The manufacturing engineer's at Stryker medical work right on the shop floor with the assembly techs. At ITW the seat heater project involved the engineer working on it hanging in right with us techs while we ran the tests. Civil Engineers are out at job sites to check and approve the results the tech's are getting from the geotechnical testing. The old roll of a P.E. stamping blueprints (prepared by a drafter and not them) is increasingly uncommon. Doesn't mean its a bad life though. Anyone with the intellectual toughness and agility to get an engineering degree is generally going to find an interesting life waiting for them. Just might not be in engineering.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
It doesn't matter how rigorous we get our educational system, or how young we teach engineering to our kids (which I think will make their brains blow up!), if we still have a more expensive work force and have international trade agreements that keep America from being a producing nation. Nearly all our electronic stuff will still be made overseas, for cheap.
...according to author Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Interesting read. He says basically all the things like engineering can easily go to (1) abundance, (2) automation, and (3) Asia (i.e., outsourcing overseas). So we need to focus our educational system on the human side of developing products, such as how a certain product will make the customer feel; ergonomics; user-friendliness; and so on. Those things take creativity, not so much engineering. Or rather, a combination of creativity working with engineering. Imagine that.
That is the point of college. Everything up to high school mean nothing. This and engineers have special responsibilities on their shoulders and have undue responsibility for their actions. There is a reason you sometimes get an software engineer to program a piece of software instead of a standard programmer.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
My Dad had a sign on his desk that said, "Siks munths ago I coodnt even spel injuneer. Now I are one."
Start with teachers playing the role of overpaid coke-addicted managers & sales people with no ethics telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it (despite knowing less than the 5th graders). Move on to telling them to steal designs and cut corners on safety in order to meet a deadline for the quarterly numbers. Weather they pull it off or not then becomes irrelevant. Tell them they cost too much and that Chinese and Indian 5th graders can do better work for 1/10th of the cost. Send them home without recess or snack. That'll give them the real experience of any sort of engineering in the western world....
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
. There was a write up in the local paper and lots of enthusiasm. I would say that the goals of the program were not so much education as...
It was a lot of fun and well received. The next batch of sessions will cover:
.
So far it has not been too hard to avoid the conversation becoming religious, thankfully it has not become a big issue. I think the after school nature of the program and the fact that it covers things that are outside the curriculum releases a lot of pressure. I had intended that the presenters "aim high" with the subject matter and leave the kids that are interested to use their own initiative to find out more; and there is plenty of evidence that this is happening based on reports of classroom discussions and students telling me about the scratch programs they have created. It really is not an intent to directly teach anything, but I have come to believe that there are many subjects that seem unsuitable (such as relativity) but in fact are more hard to believe than hard to understand. I have also come to believe that the single biggest barrier to the schools working well is lack of parental involvement. Getting some parents to come to the school and join in any event is a huge undertaking and I think is the biggest potential benefit of a program like this.
Perhaps we should just get the PTA to open a bar at the school
.
Nullius in verba
Schools don't compete on a global market. However the students from those schools do. So it isn't out of a need to compete on the market that schools are offering these lessons, it it out of concern that the student won't be equipped to compete on that market.
For a website full of supposedly educated people, the summaries just keep getting worse as time goes by.
There is some paranoid part of me that honestly wonders whether someone is feeding these talking points to slashdot on a semi-regular basis.
Articles talking about the severe lack of science, math, and engineering graduates spring perennially around here.
However, let's say that we finally find an effective method to encourage people into these programs. The end result is a surge in graduates, leading to higher competition for jobs and a downward trend in
wages. If anything, shouldn't the vast majority of slashdot users be arguing against encouraging people into these programs? These graduates will eventually be competing for jobs with you.
Setting silly arguments like that aside, I'd really like to see some concrete numbers and evidence that the lack of interest in science, math, and engineering is the main cause of our decline in manufacturing and economic strength. Couldn't it possibly be that companies prefer engineers from China, India, and other countries because they're much cheaper, even if they don't do as good of a job?
Now I understand the new policy's 12:00pm to 12:30pm "lunch" 12:30pm - 2:00pm "Nap Time"
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Why??? So they can be overworked, underpaid, get to play 20 questions to get a job? Tell them to go to business school so they can sit on their ass all day and make gobs of money in bonuses doing nothing.
When people consider the kids ready for religion at kindergarten age, I don't see why they shouldn't be ready for science.
False analogy. Maybe you are trying to make a point, but geez, what a failx0r. Either you are trying to portrait religious people as dogmatic with an equally dogmatic (and erroneous) conclusion, or you are trying to prove the former to be an absurd by assuming the implication of the former with the later to be an absurd. Logic doesn't work that way. I'm amazed that people in /. actually voted that post as interesting. They pretty much become the mirror image of creationists when doing so.
Textbook writers and professors knew all along that this stuff was elementary.
May I recommend a book for this class?
Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, 6th Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Differential-Equations-Boundary-Problems/dp/0471089559
by massive inflation. Weak dollar keep jobs inside USA, and that includes Engineering. No more excuses to outsource or to hire H1-Bs.
New Economic Perspectives
I know http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/ gameshow that is about to get a LOT harder!
Isn't kindergarten 5 year olds?
Fifth Graders are 10 year olds.
Which one is it?
Engineering used here is just a pretentious word for "how things work". All kids are interested in that ( see Richard Scary's book "How Things Work") and spending time in school on it in the early grades should be normal practice, surely.