This time it's a movement to introduce engineering classes to elementary schools, as reported by an article in yesterday's New York Times entitled Studying Engineering Before They Can Spell It.
Spurred by growing concerns that American students lack the skills to compete in a global economy, school districts nationwide are packing engineering lessons into already crowded schedules for even the youngest students, giving priority to a subject that was once left to after-school robotics clubs and summer camps, or else waited until college.These priorities have trickled up to the federal government:
Congress is considering legislation, endorsed by more than 100 businesses and organizations like I.B.M. and Lockheed Martin, to promote engineering education from kindergarten through 12th grade.And translate into yet more education spending:
In Manassas, Va., which has a thriving biotech industry, the local school district has spent $300,000 on a children's engineering program since 2008, equipping its six elementary schools with tool kits for projects like making musical instruments from odds and ends, building bridges with uncooked spaghetti and launching hot-air balloons made from trash bags and cups.Who knew toolkits involving odds and ends, uncooked spaghetti, and trash bags could cost a local school district hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The article cites several other examples of elementary school engineering projects. In Mary Morrow's classroom in Glen Rock, New Jersey:
First graders were recently challenged with helping a farmer keep rabbits out of his garden.And at the new Midway Elementary School of Science and Engineering in Anderson, South Carolina:
In teams of four, they brainstormed about building fences with difficult-to-scale ladders instead of doors and setting out food decoys for the rabbits. They drew up blueprints and then brought them to life with plastic plates, paper cups, straws and foam paper.
Then they planned to test their ideas with pop-up plastic rabbits. If the fences were breached, they would be asked to improve the design.
kindergartners celebrated Groundhog Day by stringing together a pulley system to lift a paper groundhog off the floor.Not all are enthusiastic about this trend:
As these lessons have spread, some parents, teachers and engineers question how much children are really absorbing, and if schools should be expending limited resources on the subject.
William E. Kelly, a spokesman for the American Society for Engineering Education and former dean of the engineering school at Catholic University in Washington, cautioned that engineering lessons for youngsters should be kept in perspective.Learning about engineering. Sound familiar?
"You're not really learning what I would call engineering fundamentals," he said of such programs. "You're really learning about engineering."
Here in Glen Rock, where students have long excelled at math and science, administrators and teachers decided to incorporate engineering into the elementary grades to connect classroom learning to real life, as well as to instill social skills like collaboration and cooperation that are valued in the work force, said Kathleen Regan, the curriculum director.Ms. Morrow's enthusiasm is share by her students--at least those quoted:
"They have to have the thinking skills of an engineer to keep up with all the innovation that's constantly coming into their world," Ms. Morrow said.
"It gets your brain going," said Elizabeth Crowley, 7, who wants to be an engineer when she grows up. "And I actually learn something when I'm doing a project -- like you can work together to do something you couldn't do before."But not all these students are sure what engineering is really about:
In the kindergarten class that was designing homes -- none out of hay, wood or brick -- for the three pigs, Ms. Morrow started the lesson by asking the 20 children sitting cross-legged on the carpet if they knew what engineers do.Again, building things--never mind writing poems about building things--does not entail learning engineering. As James writes at JoanneJacobs:
"They can write poems?" one girl guessed.
"Well," Ms. Morrow allowed, "they could write a poem about something they build."
It’s great that these children enjoy their projects, but it’s a mistake to convince them that it’s engineering. At best it’s iterative problem solving, which any decent machinist, farmer, carpenter, parent, etc. should be expected to do. Engineering as a discipline specifically involves the application of scientific/mathematical principles to design or develop a product or a process. By the standards exhibited in the rabbit-proof garden project (e.g., setting out food decoys) the typical scarecrow could be considered a piece of engineering.Another irony is that one of the experts quoted in the article as concerned about what students learn from these projects is the same person who is responsible for selecting the Investigations math curriculum for an Education School-School District partnership school in Philadelphia. If you want to give students the math background they need to become engineers, Investigations, which earns an "F" from mathematicians and scientists who have reviewed it, is one of the worst programs you could possibly choose.
The irony is that some of the students who are most likely to be future engineers (predominately left-brained kids) will hate the the art-project portion of the project; i.e., bringing their project “to life with plastic plates, paper cups, straws and foam paper.”