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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.
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    I’m of the opinion that school is 75% about friendship and only 25% about education. Most of the university academics in the subject of education and successive governments have got it completely wrong as they only look at the academic side of school and fail to even consider the social side of school. Schools are actually very poor at teaching social skills as the curriculum is mostly academic and the majority of social skills that kids learn from / require at school are in reality school survival skills that have little use or relevance outside of school or for life as an adult. Despite this, countless adults strongly hold the view that school is essential for children to learn social skills – although I suspect that they conflate social skills with socialisation or social skills with discipline and conformity. More often than not the first question directed towards parents who home educate is how will their children learn social skills, as opposed to questions about the standard of academic education or practical work.


    Alex Barrett makes a good point about the specific qualities of the school, et al, as I strongly believe that the other people at the school are a determining factor in how much an individual child enjoys school that is more prominent than anything academic. I have met plenty of people who were not very bright, or academically quite weak, that enjoyed school because of factors like friendships, sports, or extra curricular activities rather than the education itself.


    I agree with David Houssein’s theory that lots of highly intelligent kids don't enjoy school because it's too slow and restrictive, and frustrates them. KS2 and KS3 drives students in low gear where those who are ahead of the curriculum in the core subjects for their year group become bored and frustrated that they aren’t being stretched. Gifted and talented only really applies to sports and music. If a 10 year old is a talented sportsman or musician then they are a superstar but if a 10 year old is proficient in higher level GCSE mathematics then they are a problem child as schools do not have the facility for accelerated learning in mathematics and teachers have to teach the National Curriculum for the year group that the student is in. Most year 5 teachers do not want a kid who is doing quadratic equations and trigonometry in their class.
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    Note: for those who don't know: KS1 is ages 5-7, KS2 7-11, KS3 11-14, KS4 14-16, KS5 16-18


    Hi Arran,


    Interesting post, I think I need to take it bit by bit:





    Arran Cameron:

    I’m of the opinion that school is 75% about friendship and only 25% about education.




    From my children I'd say 25/75, but I agree it's an important point.




     Schools are actually very poor at teaching social skills as the curriculum is mostly academic and the majority of social skills that kids learn from / require at school are in reality school survival skills that have little use or relevance outside of school or for life as an adult. Despite this, countless adults strongly hold the view that school is essential for children to learn social skills – although I suspect that they conflate social skills with socialisation or social skills with discipline and conformity.




    My perspective is that the school environment provides an opportunity for children to learn social skills - as they will come up against a wide variety of different people. (Again, a concern I have about all forms of selective education - by "academic ability", by wealth of the parents, or by sex.) But I do absolutely agree that schools would ideally do far, far more to support children in learning about this world.


    I disagree about the "survival skills", the workplace (for example) needs these same "survival skills", which aren't going to be learnt at home. The problem is that different schools teach (deliberately or not) different survival skills. Some skills effectively teach "keep your head down, don't get caught", some teach "stand up tall and show the world how brilliant you are". And we see these differences when people enter the workplace. I want to see every school teaching "stand up tall and show the world how brilliant you are - and that you appreciate that other people are brilliant too". It can be done, I've seen it.




    Alex Barrett makes a good point about the specific qualities of the school, et al, as I strongly believe that the other people at the school are a determining factor in how much an individual child enjoys school that is more prominent than anything academic. I have met plenty of people who were not very bright, or academically quite weak, that enjoyed school because of factors like friendships, sports, or extra curricular activities rather than the education itself.




    Yes quite. And I think that's hugely important for growing their self confidence.




    I agree with David Houssein’s theory that lots of highly intelligent kids don't enjoy school because it's too slow and restrictive, and frustrates them. KS2 and KS3 drives students in low gear where those who are ahead of the curriculum in the core subjects for their year group become bored and frustrated that they aren’t being stretched.




    Depends on the school. It really does. (And, in my experience, very much on the headteacher.) It is perfectly possible to support children of all abilities through the KS2 and 3 curriculums, it depends how you decide to teach them.




    Gifted and talented only really applies to sports and music. If a 10 year old is a talented sportsman or musician then they are a superstar but if a 10 year old is proficient in higher level GCSE mathematics then they are a problem child as schools do not have the facility for accelerated learning in mathematics and teachers have to teach the National Curriculum for the year group that the student is in. Most year 5 teachers do not want a kid who is doing quadratic equations and trigonometry in their class.




    Again, in my experience, that totally depends on the teacher. They're human beings (underpaid and overworked human beings) so will all be different, and it is certainly true that at KS2 the problem is that classes will typically only have a single teacher with a single point of view - which may have their own biases. But good KS2 teachers will and do identify each child's abilities.



    I live in a poor and, I guess you could say, underachieving area of the country, so the following comments are generally based on schools with that background. I love going into KS1 and KS2 classes as I find them full of energy, inquiry, enthusiasm, and a willingness to just learn anything. Yes, I would like it if children could have more influences than mostly one teacher for an entire year, but it's rarely the end of the world. (Each of my children had one teacher who didn't understand them at KS2, but in the end that wasn't a huge part of their lives.)


    KS3 is a difficult time, it really is that transition you sort of mention from the fun and random inquiry of KS2 to the serious exam time of KS4. I do agree that this is where schools could (given the resources) put more effort into a) transitioning to adult social skills (they do try) and b) learning how to learn. I suspect many teachers would agree with me here. Really proactive headteachers do manage to achieve this in the KS3 curriculum.


    And after that you're into exams and puberty - a really, really bad combination. When I was studying psychology (quite late in life) my psychology tutor's specialism was the psychology of education. After I'd had a particularly rough session as a STEM Ambassador with a group of 15 year olds I joked to her that kids should leave school at 15, get puberty out of their system, and go back at (say) 21. She looked at me very directly and said "I absolutely seriously agree with you." Thinking back to my own time at that age, and also my experiences with my own children, I am slightly cynical when GCSE and A level students claim the subject is "too slow and boring" - it can be code for "actually I think there are much more exciting things I could be doing" (which, they later find out, they are probably wrong about - as they often prove come summer holiday time!)


    Incidentally, I was chatting to someone recently who was training experienced engineers, who had one class with a group who again claimed they "knew it already" and "this is too slow". Sadly that same group also failed the end of course test rather spectacularly (and he was making the point that he'd seen this happen again and again). So it's not just school children who sometimes incorrectly misjudge their abilities! A minor case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Of course this isn't always the case, I didn't ever have a problem in school with finding lessons too slow (I would just read ahead in the textbook if the teacher was helping other people in the class) but I have had various training course - particularly repeat health and safety for certification - where sometimes the tutor is not, shall we say, sensitive to the groups needs. But my attitude is that learning to cope with such issues is part of Life - and put a constructive comment on the course review form!.


    It's a hugely complicated subject, a good inspirational head teacher - who in turn will recruit good inspirational teachers - can work wonders. So it's not exactly the system that's broken. But who these days would want to become a teacher?


    Incidentally I mentioned this thread to my daughter - who's currently a 22 year old PhD science student - she came up with a very good comment that her friends who said they hated school tended to think of the 1 hour in the playground, whilst those who said they enjoyed it tended to think of the 5 hours in the classroom. As ever, a fairly self -selected group, but interesting view that once again it's not about necessarily school but can be about the attitude you bring to it. Of course in my case it was the school smiley


    Cheers,


    Andy

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    Andy Millar:


    Which is unfortunate as engineering benefits hugely from engineers with good social skills!




    Please elaborate on which particular social skills. The term social skills is broad and sweeping but in reality social skills are specific to particular situations and activities.




    Andy Millar:


    I disagree about the "survival skills", the workplace (for example) needs these same "survival skills", which aren't going to be learnt at home. The problem is that different schools teach (deliberately or not) different survival skills. Some skills effectively teach "keep your head down, don't get caught", some teach "stand up tall and show the world how brilliant you are". And we see these differences when people enter the workplace. I want to see every school teaching "stand up tall and show the world how brilliant you are - and that you appreciate that other people are brilliant too". It can be done, I've seen it.




    Again, elaborate on the survival skills. Are you implying that children who are home educated are incomplete or missing something even assuming that their academic ability and grades are comparable with a schooled child and they are generally confident individuals? Do you know enough about home education or families who home educate in order to back up your claims that XYZ aren’t going to be learnt at home?



     

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    Hi Arran,


    I'm (very deliberately!) not commenting about home education. For everything I wrote about above and which follows please read my points as relating to effective or ineffective learning in a school environment, I apologise if that was not clear. I've not had enough experience with home education to comment, so I don't.


    When I said " 'survival skills', which aren't going to be learnt at home" (relating to a school educated child) I was specifically thinking about two things: coping in an institutional environment, and coping in a social environment with a range of people with different - sometimes very different - beliefs, ideas, and backgrounds to your own. Now sometimes, perhaps very often, learning of one or the other of these doesn't happen in a school environment, or - as I suggest above - happens in a way which leads to behaviours and attitudes which could be considered unhelpful either to the person or to the organisation they end up working in. But either way, back to the original point, I believe these are highly transferable to the work environment for good or ill.


    Regarding which social skills are essential to an effective engineering team (although not necessarily to all individual engineers within that team), I would start the list with effective communication (speaking, writing and - most of all - listening), appreciation of others expertise and correct positioning of your expertise with theirs, sensitivity to others circumstances - including the fact that these may change year-by-year, day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour, willingness to admit mistakes, willingness to accept others mistakes, mutual respect, assertiveness (there's huge amounts underneath this one - but lots about it around), empathy (ditto). I'm sure others could add to the list.


    The vast majority of engineering is about teamwork, and all engineering is to deliver a product or service to a customer (even if they are another engineer!). My frustration with many schools is that they have the idea that all engineers sit in little isolated boxes, receiving instructions from somewhere on high, which they then implement without discussion and post the product out to a customer they never see. Maybe some engineers do work like that - I'm very glad I never have. Now within in an engineering team it is perfectly possible to have engineers who are excellent at their technical subject but are unable to communicate that effectively (for whatever reason) to the wider organisation or to customers etc. However the engineering team as a whole must be able to communicate effectively within itself and the (internal or external) customers, and that only works if some members of the team have those skills listed above.


    In my time as an engineering manager I've had to stop engineers hitting each other, work out what to do when two engineers on a project won't talk to each other, work out what to do when one engineer wants to sit next to another but they in turn don't want to sit next to them, engineers who refuse to let anyone else see their work etc etc etc - and listening again and again to the cry of "it's not fair!". Which is why it is very interesting when you see what behaviours a good primary school is trying to encourage! Now some people would (and do) disagree with me, but personally - based on my involvement over very many years in both very successful and very unsuccessful projects - my experience is that a team which I would describe as "socially functional" (i.e. who respect each other and communicate well with each other and the outside environment) will produce a much more successful outcome (by any standard of measurement) than a team of highly technical competent engineers who - well - aren't.


    I believe this is one of the biggest issues in 21st century engineering, there's enough underlying those brief paragraphs to fill a book. A couple of years ago I did a personal review of the current literature on engineering management where I found huge amounts about project management, time resource and cost planning and tracking, quality management, a bit on employment law, but hardly anything about bringing together a roomful of personalities - often in a highly stressful environment - and getting them to work effectively together. Which is actually what I found myself spending most of my 17 years as a manager doing. And it really really helps you as a manager if a few people on the team are naturally good at this stuff - or have learnt in childhood (back to the thread) to be good at this stuff.


    Hope that clarifies,


    Thanks,


    Andy


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    Had a further thought when I woke up this morning. Science itself (not its application) exists without a social construct. The properties of Magnesium, the existence and properties of black holes, the mechanisms by which extremophiles exists in their environments, do not exist for human purposes, nor were they developed like that to meet human needs. By contrast, engineering is 100% about taking science and applying it to human needs. The need and application of engineering is all about social interactions.


    To take my favourite example at the moment: Autonomous vehicles. One issue here is that they are being created to make people's lives easier in particular ways, if the designers misjudge how people appreciate their lives being made "easier" then they won't sell. The other issue is that they will kill people. (That's not scaremongering, it's a fact - trains and planes are very, very safe but people still die on or by them. It's a question of limiting the risk to a socially acceptable level.) Those deaths will broadly happen for one (or both) of two reasons: either the designers have misunderstood, not fully understood, or have decided to ignore, the environment the car is working in, or the designers have made an error - which will be most likely because of miscommunication within the design function. These are all social functions ranging across the boundaries of the customer, the supplier, and (within the supplier) the engineering team. Some, or ideally many, of the engineering team need to thoroughly understand and operate effectively in that social context to keep those deaths to a minimum - and to make sure that autonomous vehicles do actually deliver what the end user wants.


    But within that engineering team there is certainly space for those who function at different social interactivity levels. (Interpret that sentence how you wish - I just made it up. Any experienced engineering manager - or, indeed, university lecturer, will know exactly what I mean!)


    Cheers,


    Andy
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    Hi Andy,

    Not sure I agree with the statement that 'Science itself exists without a social construct.' I would not consider the examples you mention as being science; the studying and the knowledge of them are what I would consider science. Both those require people and therefore cannot be independent of a social construct. The falling of Newton's apple only became science because of the observation and the experiments that followed.

    Cheers,

    Ian.
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    Hi Ian,


    I quite agree it can be looked at that way, the point I was - perhaps badly - trying to make is that the apple would have fallen anyway, whereas a machine to pick apples only exists because we make it - and you can't do that without thinking about why you want an apple picking machine (which will be for human reasons) and how it will interact with the operator, and end consumer of the apple - and all people in between (ditto). So (I think this was my point) it would have been possible for Newton to successfully study gravity without thinking about how that study would effect people or vice versa - and to some extent (because of his particular personality) I suspect he did, but I may be wrong in that specific example.


    And where I very very strongly agree with you is that today scientific research can very rarely (perhaps never) effectively be successfully carried out by individuals - so again it is really useful if potential scientific researchers are also good team players with good social skills! So maybe it was an unhelpful point for me to introduce to this particular discussion. Or perhaps I just put it badly.


    Cheers,


    Andy


    P.S. Having read my OP again I think that is my point, I believe you can (in theory) study science without considering its societal impact, but I don't believe you can practice engineering in the same way. But this is putting a very complex argument very simplistically - I expect a whole PhD could be done on that subject - so I'm very happy for that to be put to one side as the main thrust of this thread is more important. Cheers, Andy
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    Andy,

    I think you are wrong in saying that you can't practice engineering without considering its societal impact. Some of the problems we see are because the engineering has been carried out without such consideration, with autonomous cars possibly being an example (so by corollary, engineers should consider the societal impact). This is actually complicated by the fact that many of the consequences of the engineering are either not foreseen or are misjudged. I think it was Arthur Balfour (UK Prime Minister) who in the early years of the 20th Century proclaimed that the invention of the motor car would eliminate the problem of congestion on the streets of London.

    Alasdair
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    Hi Alasdair,


    I think we're agreeing there that in engineering you do need to consider societal impact? Perhaps I wasn't clear, I could have said you can carry out engineering without considering it but you really shouldn't! So I yes, I very much agree with your example. Also, there are many many examples of engineers developing whizzy devices and then being completely bemused (and sometimes very angry) that no-one wants them - because the engineers in question hadn't considered the social context. The early posts in this thread very much made me think of that. I remember buying an Amstrad PCW9512, and my some of my IT-savvy colleagues being extremely rude about it - missing the point that at the time (1990ish?) it was about the only way most people could buy a computer which actually reliably worked with a printer and with a word processor that was roughly WYSIWYG. Amstrad didn't set out to produce technically the best computer, but were very clever in producing one that pretty much exactly met the customer needs. 


    Also, as a separate point (I was replying to Ian very quickly as I was working at the same time so I didn't go into this) I didn't mention that - given the context of this thread - in "societal impact" I'm including interaction with other parts of the organisation employing the engineer, and its customers, suppliers etc as well as wider society.


    So yes engineers can work in a bubble ignoring all human needs of those they will interact with - I've dealt with a few IT support engineers like that over the years - but I wouldn't recommend it. And, to risk labouring the point, as you suggest it leads to bad engineering (in the wider context).


    That'll teach me to try to avoid a boring piece of work by posting a too-quick message here smiley


    Interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday trying to compare and contrast the introduction of mainline railways with the introduction of autonomous vehicles. Taking the parallels of the death of William Huskisson at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester in 1830 with last month's death of Elaine Herzberg. If you get a chance to listen to it Alasdair I'd be interested in your view. I got a bit cross with the autonomous vehicle people, but I guess they need to try to be reassuring. Personally I'd have found it more reassuring if they'd admitted how bloomin' difficult it's going to be - but maybe that comes with my job! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z4jxw#play  


    Right, off for a very quick play in the sunshine then back to the day job...absolutely mustn't let myself get distracted this time...


    Cheers,


    Andy
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    Absolutely really genuinely final P.S, for the moment (or one of my colleagues will start getting VERY stressed!): Of course, what a customer needs is very often not what they ask for - because they don't know what an engineer might be able to produce for them that they hadn't even considered possible yet. So, once again, excellent social skills are needed there to bridge that gap and achieve the extraordinary.


    So, how do we develop those - whether in schools or elsewhere?


    Cheers,


    Andy

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