An engineering education is vast. It includes philosophies and mind level that increases with practice. A research has been conducted which shows that the mind of the kids should be similar to the mind of engineers. In recent years, the childhood perceptions of engineers have been strikingly consistent and consistently inaccurate. Some kids think that engineers build these structures and drive trains too.
Kids learn about the natural world in science classes, but what about the human-made world built on top of it. This world, constructed by engineers, rarely appears in the curriculum until college, and even then, as little as 8 percent of incoming freshmen choose to pursue an engineering major. Only half of those students will actually earn a degree in the field. The shortage is clear.
Our society depends upon engineers to design every aspect of our lives — where we live, what we drive, how we communicate and even what we eat but the other countries education systems aren’t producing enough critical thinkers to keep up with the demand. The standards raise the bar for integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics content — collectively, STEM — into elementary and high school classrooms.
Most of the schools and institutions are focusing on the ‘E’ in a STEM. Engineering provides an overlooked opportunity to teach kids how to work together and solve problems at a very young age. Such experiences can empower them to do so later in life when the stakes are higher.
Instead of a curriculum or a test that students must be able to pass, the science and engineering standards lay out benchmarks for what concepts students should know at particular grade levels, each year building on those before it. With this, they could integrate engineering ideas into math and language arts classes and apply engineering skills to real-world scenarios so students are better prepared for such experiences outside of school.
This means instead of teaching facts that kids can just as easily Google, for example, science education should “enable students to evaluate and select reliable sources of scientific information,” according to the standards.
Younger students need experiences with engineering and technology if they’re going to succeed in our 21st-century world. This world increasingly depends on these disciplines. But schools are failing to nurture these natural design inclinations. Problem-solving skills should be considered a basic literacy.
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