Young People Dont Know How to Fix Anything, Scientist Claims
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
https://www.yahoo.com/diy/young-people-dont-know-how-to-fix-anything-106523138575.html
Professor Danielle George: On a mission to bring back the art of 'thinkering'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/professor-danielle-george-on-a-mission-to-bring-back-the-art-of-thinkering-9946602.html
In her lecture "Sparks will fly: How to hack your home", she aims to show that it isn't such a big step "between having fun in your bedroom, garage, garden shed and solving some of the big engineering challenges".
Professor George, who specialises in radio frequency and microwave communications, doesn't fully understand why Britons have lost the art of tinkering, but she believes it is to do with a lack of confidence from parents and teachers, a perception "that science and maths is hard" and fear of failure. It is also because we take many of the machines that run our lives so efficiently for granted.
Kids today. They dont tinker or get their hands dirty when something breaks. They just toss it out and buy another disposable trinket to replace it.
Thats the view of a leading engineering professor in England, at least, who warns that people under 40 are a lost generation when it comes to learning how everyday items work and how to fix them.
Weve got a lost generation that has grown up with factory electronics that just work all of the time, Danielle George tells the Telegraph.
Professor Danielle George: On a mission to bring back the art of 'thinkering'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/professor-danielle-george-on-a-mission-to-bring-back-the-art-of-thinkering-9946602.html
In her lecture "Sparks will fly: How to hack your home", she aims to show that it isn't such a big step "between having fun in your bedroom, garage, garden shed and solving some of the big engineering challenges".
Professor George, who specialises in radio frequency and microwave communications, doesn't fully understand why Britons have lost the art of tinkering, but she believes it is to do with a lack of confidence from parents and teachers, a perception "that science and maths is hard" and fear of failure. It is also because we take many of the machines that run our lives so efficiently for granted.
Comments
My ancient Sears washer and dryer are two more examples. Controls are all electromechanical -- not an LCD in sight. I had to replace a belt on the dryer once. 'Got a length of urethane "rope" from a sporting goods store, heat-welded the ends together, and it's lasted more than 20 years.
But very few of the new cars, appliances, or other products sold today would permit this kind of access or improvisation. Back when ham radio was king, people tinkered with their equipment all the time. But who would dare do that with an iPhone? Most consumer products simply lock the user out of any reasonable access. And out-of-warranty factory repairs are too expensive, so things just get discarded and replaced.
-Phil
There is a similar issue with personal computers. People should be aware of security problems when they forego antivirus software and fail to do system backups.
.
Most people just buy a new computer when they experience malware problems but they continue down the same path and don't backup their system and do dumb things like opening attachments from people they don't know.
So many people think the computer is ruined, like it is a hardware issue rather than a user behavior issue.
Part of the problem is electronics infesting all sorts of consumer devices making them disposable or too complex to fix and the electronics are often SMT and thus unrepairable to all but a select few. A lot of devices aren't even made to opened let alone repaired as well.
Another problem is a cultural shift, back in the 60's and early 70's men still liked to work with their hands as a hobby and magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics gave them all sorts of monthly projects of all sorts. At the same time shop classes in school thrived - boys were learning metal and wood work, repairing cars, learning the basics of electronics. By the end of the 80's all that ceased. Shop classes were gone, the monthly periodicals supporter the how-to guy were no more, just glossy rags for urban white collar types.
The manual arts in school had gotten a bad rep from the college types and school administrators who instead promoted the notion that real work is working at a desk in a suit and tie and pushing paper all day and only losers work with their hands. So shop was replaced with computer classes and kids learned word processing and game playing in their place.
It's nice though to see the DIY/maker movement make a comeback in recent years. It's nice way to empower both kids and adults. Not to mention taking the mystery out various devices. Still I'd like to see shop return to public schooling but I suspect that will never happen considering how lawsuit happy parents are.
I have said it before in this forum, the whole educational system needs a complete overhaul, top to bottom. OK - so not everybody is going to be an engineer, but even if you are just a working joe, or maybe a leader/manager in some industry, you need to know this stuff to make the right logical (science based) decisions, and in some instances social or industry policy.
Funny too, how once in a while, those "get it done" or "make it work" skills come in really handy. I know I've dug a few "knowledge workers" out of a hole in my life, and then can go right back in and join them in that work as well. +1 for anybody who took it apart, or got dirty growing up.
My High School offered a full set of those skills, and it was kind of a small, rural town, but people knew how to do stuff. Even those people who didn't get too much in the way of school. (70's and 80's era)
There is another somewhat ugly thing out there and that is the wall between engineering and manufacturing. In general, and I write this knowing some great engineers who can make things and enjoy doing that, the academic path to mechanical engineering definitely puts actual manufacturing out in the side yard, where students can gawk at it, while being told the whole time they are going to school to avoid labor like that. Personally, I have found this annoying as all get out during my career.
I got started manufacturing, and very rapidly came to understand the machines and more importantly, quality and the business issues surrounding manufacturing overall. Know what paid off big?
Doing design reviews! Somebody wants it cheaper. A good friend and I, having secured a solid mastery of our manufacturing niche, called 'em back and asked for a meeting at the table. This was rejected, and the engineers proposed their cost saving changes. After a few cycles of this, my friend and I called a couple of those guys to ask, "WTF??", and they actually wondered about it too.
So we met somewhere and took every last dime out of those parts, while improving them in various ways. Took us a few hours. We went back, made prototypes, and produced a set of "approval drawings", which were all sent along with a very nice price.
Some phone calls and interesting discussions later, "the team", consisting of engineers and manufacturers (us), went through a ton of stuff, and that relationship was very profitable for everybody. Interestingly, on many of the parts, our margin to manufacture went up, despite overall cost going down. So we actually made money by saving them money. Funny how that all worked.
That was very late 80's to mid-90's. Most of that work got outsourced and or made redundant, due to general technology progress and a few other factors.
Since that time, I've taught mechanical CAD classes off and on for years. Bringing a manufacturing perspective to these is always interesting. Most of the students, once they get past the politics and culture of it, have a ton of questions! And being engineers in the making, they take the answers, like anything else they can get their brains wrapped around, and just do better engineering like they want to do anyway!
Couple that with the trends for automation today, and the desire to not get caught up in the mess to come is pushing people away from actually doing things, other than information things. Market for computer code is supposed to be something like either 2 or 4 billion over the next 10 years. Everybody and their brother seems to want to program, but the market for industrial automation, robots, and related things is seriously big too, and both will be needed to advance the state of things.
DRM, complicated electronics, and all the usual things we talk about here are making it harder to get skills. I'm a big fan of the maker type movement because it has open hardware and software coming along for the ride and I think people are going to find those messy things preventing ordinary people from getting things done aren't as necessary as everybody would have all of us believe.
I expect some serious and sustained clashes along a few fault lines over the next 20 years. It won't always make sense to make it "there" when people need work "here", or if we resolve that with basic income, or some revaluation of labor, or new labors, it may not always make sense to make it high-tech and set to expire, or sold as a rental, when it can be made once and serviced either. Other fault lines should be obvious from here.
Interesting times guys. Very, interesting times ahead.
But now? Part of the American problem is the lack of work for non paper pushers. Production got automated or outsourced.
Being able to fix things will get you a job as janitor, if you are lucky. Shop classes? Yeah. Fixing a 68 Pontiac was doable with 14-15 year old kids in school. Try with a 2002 Prius or whatever newer car. Will not work.
Some of the kids are smart enough and have the financial backing to be engineers, doctors, layers or cooperative managers. But other lack either or both of it. What should them do?
There was a time where the telephone guy had a screwdriver, some pliers, a Multi Meter, a headset and some climbing gears. Basic mechanical skills needed, He came and fixed your problem.
Today they come with a Laptop, a ATT tablet/workbench, a truck full of stuff and can not get your lines working because it is RAINING in California! No joke,
Same with most other service related jobs for people not having the skills or money to go to a university. A lot of things get neither serviced nor repaired, but replaced. Its cheaper. As said above other stuff get to complicated to fix.
So why exactly should a kid learn this skills, if it will be of no use?
A lot of people here said they would like to be young again. I don't. What a boring life they have. I grew up quite poor, so I started working quite early in my life delivering newspapers before school. No big deal and I earned my bicycle. It was MINE.
How many of you get a newspaper delivered? Are there still paper boys? This year some 12 year old girl got arrested in New York for running a illegal business. The police seized all her equipment and took her to jail. They called the parents in and fined them.
She was running a illegal lemonade stand.
Being young again, NOW? No way.
Sad!
Mike