I am a strong believer that anyone who goes into Engineering has a little bit of a "save the world" complex. Those who are good at STEM are aware of a the gift that they have for numbers and logical thinking, and with this I think (and hope) that we strive to create a better world through technology. We are the seerers of potential, the wizards, shamans, and priests of the ever growing technological world and we have the amazing ability to craft and cultivate a grander infrastructure of happiness for mankind.
Now at this point it may seem that I am building those who are STEM oriented to be these grand infallible individuals, but my intention is not this at all. I want it to be understood that I truly believe Engineers are the builders of tomorrow and that we hold a tremendous power. What I don't want to be taken away is that I believe we are without fault. I think our greatest fault is actually because we are so logically thinking.
Our logical thinking, along with the way we are taught, leads us to strive heavily to be more and more technologically knowledgeable. We seek out paths that will increase our knowledge of science. We take internships in design to better our resumes. We do research as a job to refine our interests. We code and read science magazines to enhance our understanding. We fill all of our down time with activities to stuff our memory banks with a very specific type of knowledge. Then once we have pushed ourselves to the limits and finally rest, we do so completely. When we rest we wholly shut down our brain because it can't take anymore and we neglect to stretch our other mental muscles.
Now doing all of this is admirable, but in acting this way, we as engineers neglect something. We forget people and how they interplay into what we learn. We forget that the things we build and learn really affect people. We learn grand things in our education, but we don't learn how to best use them to help others. We don't ponder ethical and just ways to wield what we know and I think this is incredibly unfortunate. We lack a rounded education that helps us weld the sciences and humanities.
I'm glad that we ended the class with Justice, because I think that it is one of the greatest bridges between the sciences and humanities. Engineers do not act in bubbels. What they design has direct impacts and if we don't think about justice and humanity, we lose out on being better engineers.
I agree with the sentiment you speak of Meghan, that many STEM oriented folk are imbalanced in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I think that often the scientific type tends to avoid developing a better understanding of their place in the web of humanity, because humans are in general paradoxical down to their core. And paradoxes are difficult, because there is no one answer. The overall problems of humanity and society, are not easy problems to solve. In comparison to say, being handed an engineering task to complete, following the logic learned in school, and outputting a single well defined solution.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest reason for this I think, is that in STEM we emphasize that the problems to fix are out there, in the world, rather than in here. The problem is with others, theres no problem here, no problem here at home. I might spend 10 hours a day in front of a computer, sitting, abusing my body which evolved for motion not sedation, eating Raman or whatever.... But I am doing it to solve the problems of the world!!!! There are bigger problems than my personal health, look at all the starving kids in (insert country).
But there aren't bigger problems than the personal. Please put your own oxygen mask on before attempting to help others. But this is what we STEM people do. Because focusing on the problems of others is easy, its impersonal. The hardest things to look at, to study and find a solution to, are the personal ones. Well, the most difficult problems are also the most rewarding, individually, and globally. Personal development and balance ripples outward, changing the mentality of those in the immediate vicinity, and then ripples again, and again, and again...
Great read and I think you make a great point in saying that engineers don’t act in bubbles. I would go further and say that no one really acts in bubbles. Using some of the same language, we lose out on being better human beings if we cannot recognize that our actions and interactions have a greater effect than we may think. Nonetheless, I feel like much of the human side of engineering is being downplayed. From the first design class we take, we’re taught that the two most important things in a design are the wants and needs of the stakeholders and the clients. I would say that we’re taught to think about how the design may affect people. Maybe this aspect of engineering could be emphasized but it’s not as if we conditioned to completely ignore people. I would argue that its more about the culture that schools such as Mines cultivates which focuses much more on the areas you mentioned: Did you get an internship? Did you get an interview? Did you get an offer? These questions sort of fail to highlight relationships and human impact and instead cultivate a hypercompetitive atmosphere which could be seen as good or bad. I’m not sure what it is but I would definitely agree that we could always be better engineers by focusing on how best to round ourselves out.
ReplyDeleteMeghan, I agree with you completely. This is a very timely post for me, as my Zine relies heavily on the idea of injecting the humanities back into the sciences and engineering through storytelling. I think of stories as a perfect bridge between the two – they are engaging and human-based at their heart, but they can also carry important messages and information. When we synthesize these two worlds with stories, we convey scientifically accurate information in more meaningful ways. I think of a documentary we watched in one of my McBride classes about the AIDS crisis in the 80s in the United States. You can read thousands of scholarly articles about the number of people died, the discrimination they faced, and the challenges they overcame to receive the funding and attention or required. But it was the image of a 9-year-old girl, crying in the first pew of her dad’s funeral that led to a deeper understanding of the devastation of the AIDS crisis. Science doesn’t need to fear stories. They are a useful tool which makes complicated information more palatable and accessible to a greater number of people.
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