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.

Comments

He Huffed and he Puffed....

[GreenTech11]

... 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?

Re:He Huffed and he Puffed....

[jsnipy]

I did Anonymous Coward; it's unlikely they will start with the more complicated concepts in kindergarten

Re:He Huffed and he Puffed....

[Barrinmw]

One requires complex thought that people don't develop till they are about 12 and the other one just requires people to be dogmatic about something.

Parents are the Biggest Factor

[slifox]

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

Re:Parents are the Biggest Factor

[NervousWreck]

Another thing parents can do to get their kids started on engineering: Science fiction. Thanks to science fiction I developed an interest in IT plus marketable skills in the same despite having little natural aptitude for it. Bruce Coville's AI gang trilogy led me to start learning Perl at age ten (admittedly it fell by the wayside until age 16, but still.)

Re:Parents are the Biggest Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also lock the child into a cage of puzzles he/she would need to deconstruct before being released. Although this may eventual lead to the crushing of all his/her hopes and then to severe anti-social activities, drug use and suicide the outcome of producing someone who has the ever-vaunted ENGINEERING skills would be worth it.

Or you could just chill out, let the kids play and see what happens. You might get an engineer, you might get a singer, you might get an accountant. It's a surprise in every box.

Re:Parents are the Biggest Factor

[piles_of_spam]

I'm an engineer, and I am a parent of a 4 year old (soon to be 5) and one that's about to be 2. The 2 year old is really comfortable with 'Duplo' (the double size lego sets) as he doesn't have the coordination to manage small parts yet, and there's a choke hazard. The other thing that fits the 2 year old well is the wooden Thomas the train sets. We spend hours building elaborate track sets.

The 4 year old, on the other hand, is helping me to build a wooden spaceship for part of his space themed birthday party in July. He has his own hand tools, but I've also gotten him an electric screwdriver and a small set of hex base drill bits which he uses only under my supervision. It's really fun for me when he specifies design changes with the reason 'After all, daddy, it IS my spaceship.' The tricky part is keeping things moving fast enough to maintain his interest, but still promoting tenacity towards the goal of completing the project and making it cool.

I don't necessarily want to turn my sons into engineers. That would be fine, but I really want them to experience the value of concepts like 'work vs. reward', 'make your own fun', and especially 'turning your own imagination into reality'. No matter what they do, these concepts will take them somewhere. One thing I've learned is that my kids each have a compass needle. They gravitate towards natural abilities and interests, and I want to provide opportunities in those areas, but I also have to bolster the areas they don't naturally excel in.

Here's the curriculum

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Here's the curriculum

[Chrisq]

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

8) Profit by bringing dubiously generic and obvious patent cases against those daft enough still to be producing something for a living and who won't be able to afford to defend themselves in court.

Re:Here's the curriculum

[D Ninja]

This is a sad post, and even sadder that it was marked Insightful.

Yes, there are downsides to engineering, as there is in any industry (although engineers typically only see their own). However, please give me a good problem to solve, and a bunch of smart people to solve it with, over anything that some of the other majors involve. I love solving problems and getting things (software in my case) to work together. Some of my best college memories were the nights my friends and I would stay up and work on a difficult programming problem and achieve a great deal of satisfaction in doing so.

Yeah, there is the money issue (although, there are a number of engineers who have gone on to make a great deal of money), but, as Forrest Gump's mama said, "There is only so much money a man needs, and the rest is for showing off." At some point, you have to decide what is really most important to you and what it is that you enjoy doing.

Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing really new here. "Primitive" societies have involved children in engineering -- boatbuilding, weapons tech, housing construction, medicine, agriculture -- for millenia.

No more one-off prototypes

[AmazinglySmooth]

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?

Re:No more one-off prototypes

[natehoy]

Sure, but one-off prototypes are what get kids fascinated in engineering.

The article talks of fifth-graders (in public school in the US, that translates to about 10-11 years old), at that age you're doing well to keep them interested long enough to complete a one-off and demonstrate that it works, especially in the modern world of passive consumption (TV, video games, etc) calling to them. Having them build a one-off out of Popsicle sticks, string, and duct tape that can lift a 2-pound brick will teach them a lot about material tensile strengths, reinforcement, planning, angles, etc. Most of all, it will teach them that this stuff is way cool, and they'll start experimenting. The ones who start experimenting and remain interested are the ones you choose for an engineering track.

I agree that any applied engineering track should include things like reusing available components whenever possible, emphasizing durability, thinking carefully about ongoing maintenance (eg. don't put consumable or frequently-replaced parts in inaccessible places or make them too hard to remove/repair/replace). I've purchased enough stupid shitty designs (proprietary connectors on digital cameras? In 2010? Really? Seriously?) to agree that you are correct - we need people thinking about cheap mass production, maintainability, and durability.

But an 11-year-old will be fully engaged when he/she has to build something to meet a specific goal. And that usually means a one-off. It's certainly appropriate to emphasize use of standard components (make them available) and to encourage durability in design (make it part of the goal).

By the time you reach a PHD, hopefully you've learned to make and refine designs that are reliable and based on cheaply-available components whenever possible. It's certainly a valid point, and the PHDs that stick purely to one-offs have either slept through some of the most important lessons or they were never offered by their classrooms. But for a 5th grader, you just want to get them thinking about engineering principles, and offer them enough information to explore and want to learn more.

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled. It is a fire to be kindled."
  - Plutarch

At 11 years old, we don't want an engineer. We want someone who is excited about engineering and wants to learn more. We want that kid who sets the butter on fire because he just knew he could fix that radio and didn't get the whole AC/DC thing. (OK, that was me, but you get the point, and I was about 12 at the time).

Re:No more one-off prototypes

[Nebulious]

By your definition, CERN is not a feat of engineering. Engineering, to me, is about systems. It's about taking many separate things making them function together to create something new. The purpose or application is moot. The real challenge of engineering is to account for the endless variables that can affect your product/system, from material properties to failure points. Engineering is the ability to weave the things and information you have to work with as seamlessly as possible. Yes, engineers make products. But they are also coders who work on simulations and so much more.

Re:Which cliches do we want?

[Sir_Lewk]

Yeah exactly. What's even worse is this kind of nonsense is starting to infect mathematics as well! Math classes are filled with tired old cliches like calculating the sides of a triangle or the area of a circle, or learning algrebra. I say get these kids started coming up with a prove for the Riemann hypothesis, then let them go from there.