Engineers seen as 'less intelligent', warns Royal Academy

Royal Academy of Engineering report says children are 'natural engineers' but schools prevent them from developing these innate skills

Young children are “natural engineers” but the education system does not serve to encourage their innate practical skills, putting more value in academic and theoretical learning instead, says Royal Academy of Engineering report.
 
The report states that if the UK wants to produce more engineers it must redesign its education system and do more to encourage raw engineering skills that children exhibit from an early age.

“Young children exhibit engineering habits of mind in the raw,” says the report, titled Thinking like an Engineer – Implications for the Education System. “When the cardboard structure they have built is strong enough to support the weight of other toys and becomes a medieval castle, there is the thrill of persistent and successful experimentation.”

However, the report finds that schools are liable to “extinguish” children's latent engineering ability because the education system persists in believing “that people who design, make and fix things must be less intelligent than those who write essays, make speeches or understand quadratic equations.”

The study, carried out by researchers from the University of Winchester’s Centre for Real World Learning, interviewed engineers, teachers and lecturers, identifies six “engineering habits of mind” that should be embedded into the education system: systems thinking, adapting, problem finding, creative problem solving, visualising and improving.

Report author Bill Lucas said: “Engineers think differently from the rest of the world. And society badly needs their problem-solving, systems-thinking and relentlessly-seeking-to-make-and-improve mindset.

“Our argument is for schools to adopt a much more fundamental, immersive, problem-based, serious approach to the cultivation of these habits of mind. Not just because they will create great engineers, which I believe they will, but also because they are genuinely good habits of mind for all children to have,” he added.