Engineering education has been infiltrated by a “phalanx of social justice warriors” who are steadily corrupting the field, according to a Michigan State University professor.Hear hear, it's about time someone in academia points this out.
“They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as ‘diversity’ and ‘different perspectives’ and ‘racial gaps’ and ‘unfairness’ and ‘unequal outcomes’ make up the daily vocabulary,” asserts Mechanical Engineering professor Indrek Wichman in an essay published Wednesday by the James G. Martin Center.
“Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group representation, hurt feelings, and ‘microaggressions’ in the profession,” Wichman adds.
Citing the Purdue University School of Education Engineering as a case study, Wichman claims that “engineering education” schools increasingly focus on concepts that are incompatible with the actual discipline, such as “empowering” students and “reimagining” engineering as a more “socially connected” field of study.
“For the record, engineers ‘empower’ themselves and, most important, other people, by inventing things,” he points out. “Those things are our agents of change.”
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Monday, August 20, 2018
Math Is Haaaaaard
It's a lot easier to complain about the patriarchy than it is actually to learn or accomplish something:
Wasn't there a social-justice-engineered bridge that killed some people in Florida a while back?
ReplyDeleteIf you mean the bridge at FIU, I remember the collapse--but what was the SJW component of the story?
ReplyDeleteHere's a quote from the CEO:
ReplyDeleteLinda Figg, CEO of Figg Bridges, explained in an interview with Founders Club why the company’s slogan is “Creating Bridges as Art.” She said that when the company was first started, the Federal Highway Administration had a program that required any bridge that cost over $10 million to have an alternate design. Figg focused on creating those alternate designs, and over time began to win awards for aesthetics.
It seems that aesthetics to a back seat to safety and functionality. Art rather than function and safety. The construction company has been pretty well exonerated, it's owned and run by 5 brothers, but the design company seems to have been a women run concern.