SATRO is privileged to work with nearly 1,000 volunteers
from all areas of the working world, including many hundreds of scientists and
engineers, one of our regular supporters has given us his views on what today’s
candidates of all parties, should be thinking about, do tell us what you think...
The shortage of a thousand GPs in the next five
years is a serious problem that has been well covered in the media. What
isn’t covered in the media is much, much more serious; it is a slow motion
disaster, nearly a thousand times more serious than the shortage of
doctors. It is the million or more shortfall expected in scientists,
professional engineers and technicians in the next five years.
We
need a million people with a ‘feel for stuff’, people who have almost
unconscious feel for the real physical world, a feel for what will work
and what won’t. Recently, I interviewed 20 people for a job and rejected
nearly all of them because they simply didn’t have that practical feel.
They had the qualifications, the personal qualities, and they wanted to do the
job. However, they wouldn’t have the confidence to design something that
was new, that was a little different from what had gone before.
Too
many young people are missing out on getting hands-on with practical things
related to science and engineering at an age when abilities are naturally
absorbed. Between the ages of 10 and 18, roughly, if someone has the
chance to make things, to do practical tests and experiments, to see how things
work by taking them apart, the chance to design something new and improved
perhaps, then they will get that magical ‘feel for stuff’. This
practical work will complement their academic studies. If you use
something you have learned, or learn about something you have used, then you
will remember it. And, what is more, remember it in a way that that means
that you will never forget it, and in a way that you will be able to use it.
I tried
out sending coded messages with a group of primary school children last
week. They learnt some great practical stuff about sending messages down
wires and the hardware to do that (it involved calculators: what I call a
‘Calculator Communicator’). Meanwhile a whole lesson in Maths, English
and the alphabet was being sneaked past them as they wrote down and coded, transmitted
and decoded messages.
So
let’s have a campaign for parents, for teachers, for students: it is vital that
they understand this issue and how it affects them. Let’s have a campaign
to train our primary teachers: no primary school should be left without a
teacher with the ability to do practical science, to make things and show kids
how to make things, to show them how things work. And let’s have a
campaign to put science and engineering firmly on the agenda - and the
curriculum - of all schools.
We
need to get our youngsters busy with saw and soldering iron, taking apart
broken Hoovers and printers, and busy making things. Those things may or
not work well as hardware, but will in either case teach our children lessons
essential for them and for the nation.
- Prof
Neil A Downie MA PhD
