
This is your brain on engineering - jaboutboul
http://video.wired.com/watch/this-is-your-brain-on-engineering
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rubiquity
I know the purpose of this ad is to promote young women to explore
engineering, but does anybody else hate the whole "Engineering jobs are
growing faster than any other industry!" meme? I hate it for a couple reasons.

The first reason is that it's a lie. Software Engineering? Sure, it's growing.
Electrical Engineering? Maybe. Mechanical Engineering? Hell no.

The second reason is that I remember when I was growing up all the hype was
"Become an Accountant!! It's growing rapidly!" Now look around at everyone
with an accounting degree. Whoops.

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melling
No, I don't. Maybe you get an undergrad engineering degree then decide you
want an MBA or law degree. Don't you think the world would be a little better
off if more people spent more time studying math and science?

Do you think the second half of the 21st century will require people to know
more science and math, or less?

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Jgrubb
This is completely off topic, but I was thinking about this statement just the
other day -- "Don't you think the world would be a little better off if more
people spent more time studying math and science?" \-- in the context of this
abominable new educational policy that we have here in the US called the
"Common Core Curriculum".

I don't understand the Common Core well enough to really come up with policy
ideas about it, but the gist of the idea is that our children here in America
are not as good at Math and Science as other countries, and that we should be
very alarmed by that supposed fact. The response has been to cut back on arts,
music programs, physical education in order to spend more time "teaching" kids
to get better grades on test about Math and Science. I had this thought, and I
wonder if it's controversial.

Might it be okay that some kids in other countries are better at math and
science than our kids supposedly are here? Is that the only set of skills that
America is going to need in the 21st century, to the detriment of pretty much
everything else? I don't think so, personally. I think it's more important
that kids get a well rounded experience, even if that means lower scores on
some tests that couldn't possibly be an accurate measure across global
cultures.

I'm sorry, I'd have made this shorter but I didn't have the time.

~~~
dmm
Different states have vastly different curriculums. A third grader from texas
moves to california. The math class she's now in may be covering completely
different material. It might assumes she has mastered skills she hasn't even
seen yet. The common core solves that problem by bringing consistency to what
subjects are covered when.

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Bartweiss
Interesting - I certainly understand the intent but those notecards brought to
mind a lot of questions.

One that I don't see mentioned elsewhere is about "By age 13, more than half
of all girls are unhappy with their bodies." I'd love a source not because I
doubt that it's true, but because I want to see a number for boys. 13 is the
start of puberty, and most kids are clumsy and squeaky and looking longingly
at the kids who are already attractive or athletic or just not so damn
awkward. I take their point, but I didn't like my body at 13 and it wasn't
because of gender roles. It's because my body _didn 't work very well_.

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red12ooster
I'm all for promoting women into STEM fields but this just feels like a really
half-assed effort to market another (possibly inferior) kinex/lego type
product

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brianfinkel
Yes. Parents who really want their girls to appreciate STEM can simply sit
down with them, do something technical that is age appropriate, and encourage
them to work hard at understanding things. And that's exactly what boys need,
too!

~~~
Moneta_xi
Also there shouldn't be pressure on boys or girls to be anything in
particular. Parents should encourgae their children to find what they like and
encourgae and nuture that.

~~~
jaboutboul
totally agreed. as engineers we'd all love for our children to follow in out
footsteps, but if everyone was in STEM professions, what would become of the
world?

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herge
This is the group that stole the Beastie Boy's song and broke Adam Yauch's
dying wish, right?

~~~
czottmann
Short answer: yes.

~~~
abvdasker
Long answer: yes.

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sanoli
Yeah, that last frame... I don't know, so girls are our greatest resource
because... they will be childbearers? Probably not the original intention, but
it didn't go very well.

~~~
brianfinkel
I also object to the suggestion that either gender is superior. Girls are our
"greatest resource?" Really? What about boys? How would people respond if I
made a video suggesting that boys are greatest? After all, they're bigger and
stronger, and have had more scientific achievements.

I'm not an expert, but I actually think that there is current data to suggest
that boys today are having much more trouble learning and focusing than girls.
I think there might even be more girls enrolled in college than boys.

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greenwalls
If engineeing can do this imagine what engineering can do.

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czottmann
And here's the original video on YT, minus the Wired framing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog)

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whileonebegin
I get the point they're trying to make, but putting a little girl in a kitchen
with pink pastel colors, a princess egg, and other gender-biased artifacts
defeats the purpose. It only reinforces the idea that girls are different and
need to be treated that way. I suppose it eases gender-biased parents into
buying more constructive toys for their girls, but that's only addressing the
symptom, not the problem: equality.

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Wintamute
Girls should be attracted into STEM by developing an educational/social
environment that nurtures any indication that an individual female (or male)
child is showing some interest.

Tempting girls into the field by dangling a carrot on a stick in the form of
higher wages seems demeaning and backwards. What's more, in an age where
automation is taking away more and more jobs it seems sensible to cultivate
attitudes where enjoyment of work and achievement is valued more than direct
personal income generation.

In any case, research shows that in countries where females are the most
financially and socially free to do what they want they naturally tend towards
roles related to medicine, caring and education, leaving the highly systematic
jobs to men (engineering, computer science etc.). There's nothing wrong with
that in and of itself, its just a difference, but we just need to make sure
that anybody of any gender that exists on the spectrum of humanity is as free
as possible to do what makes them happy.

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weland
This would have been a nice video, were it not for the last frame. "Girls are
more than princesses... they are our greatest resource." Nice. Not sexist at
all, 'cause it says nice things about girls.

But it does bring an interesting point: "at age 7, girls begin to lose
confidence in math and science". I wish there was a source to that, because
the way I remember it when I was a kid, math and science weren't exactly
popular subjects among any of the 7-year old kids I met, but this is something
I can relate to. I actually am an engineer (EE), studied a lot of hard math
and use a lot of hard math in my day job. But, were it not for a complexity of
factors that basically boiled down to "You can either do programming, which
you like, so it's not a big deal, or you can study history and starve happy",
I wouldn't have gone into this job. Were it to base my decision solely on what
I did in school, before university, I'd have gone into something as far
removed from mathematics and physics as possible.

For all my pre-university years I have hated mathematics with a passion. The
queen of all sciences that promised to open many doors to understanding the
universe largely consisted of various ways in which to (tediously) do things
we have calculators for during the first eight years, and then of various ways
in which to (tediously) do things that don't say anything about the universe.
Physics, which supposedly had to be about explaining how the world works, was
largely about how quickly trains reach cities and the greatest skill I was
taught there was reasoning about why the results you get in real life are an
order of magnitude away from what you get on paper. Due to my passion for
astronomy, I _knew_ there was more to Physics, but I was so utterly disgusted
with Mathematics that one of the main reasons I chose EE instead of CompSci
was that I wanted to make sure they don't put math in my coding. In retrospect
it was actually a good decision, but for different reasons.

Enter first year EE now, where the first thing you do is these two semesters
of advanced fucking calculus (background: where I live, there's a good
proportion of calculus that's actually done in high school. Most Calculus I
courses I've seen in American universities actually cover what is 11th and
12th grade material around here). Now, I wasn't afraid of them -- I hated
mathematics, but not being stupid, I was good enough at it. But holy mother of
numbers now it made sense.

Now the other thing you do along with those two semesters of calculus is two
semesters of Physics. Well shit: _mechanics_ now made sense. But it was
actually a combination of factors that made it make sense.

The first one was Philosophy. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why
people thought Newton was such a genius, nor why classical mechanics was
considered to be so beautiful. It wasn't until put in its proper context that
I understood how incredible Newton's contributions were. No one bothers to
tell school kids about how people thought that the natural state of objects
was rest, not motion, and that it wasn't until Newton figured out that and how
to mathematically talk about changing quantities that we could understand how
and why bodies move. _Now_ it felt like Physics and Mathematics were true to
their promises; prior to that, it seemed to me that they were just these
boring, obnoxious tools adults built because they lacked intuition.

The other one was analytical mechanics but that's probably not as important.

Four years of EE later, I finally began to grasp what really was fascinating
about math and science. They allowed me to do a lot of things: reason about
the world around me _and_ about how correct my reasoning is, provide a
framework upon which to build and test inventions and help me think about
_why_ we do some of the things we do.

 _None_ of these are even remotely touched before university. Granted, they
can't be done rigorously before the basics are laid out, but at least some
basic treatment should be there. But no. All _everyone_ , girls and boys
learn, is how to solve for x, never even suspecting that the real challenge
and beauty is in formulating problems in terms of "solve for x".

~~~
MikeTLive
It will be people with your insight that will turn the education systems on
their head and allow human society to move to the next level.

~~~
weland
Let's hope it will be people with insight even better than mine :-). Thanks!

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brianfinkel
I don't get this company. Encouraging girls to do technical stuff is awesome
(just as awesome as encouraging boys!), but why are their building toys all
purple and pink and girlie? That seems like a contradiction to me.

We have a 5 yo daughter and immerse her in all kinds of technical stuff (along
with our 2 yo son), like building toys, 3d puzzles, math games, chess, etc. I
would love for her to be a killer engineer!

But I have no interest in these pink building toys. There are so many far
better gender-free toys. Knex, Superstructs, Legos, Magnatiles, Tegu blocks,
etc., are just a few that are far more appealing to me as a parent.

As a society, we do seem to have a "princess problem," but I just don't see
how pink building toys can solve it.

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pera
I don't see how a color could be a problem...

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brianfinkel
I don't think the color is a problem, other than it appears to be the chief
innovation from this company. It seems to me that if you want your daughter to
get traction with STEM, you need to provide her with interesting, high quality
materials and spend time exploring them with her. Maybe I'm missing something,
but i think there are already superior, better priced materials than these, so
where is the value here?

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avaku
There were lots of woman scientists in USSR, and I don't think there was
gender-related discrimination... Much fewer than men, but probably not for the
reasons that are now popular to attribute to this phenomenon. Just saying...

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aioprisan
uh, title typo?

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jaboutboul
fixed. thanks.

