Engineers should embrace the arts.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Engineers need to embrace the arts.

 

 

Engineers should embrace the arts, Sir John O'Reilly, a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, argued in a lecture.

 

There is more to engineering than nuts and bolts.  The creative side is often not emphasized enough.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I paint, draw manga-style pictures, make pixel art for an open source video game that had been in Development Hell from 2009 to 2014 and listen to music (and occasionally try and fail to play or write music) and I am a chemistry and chemical engineering undergraduate student.

 

--Ocram

[Duke87 1,070]

I don't know what may be at the root of the UK's issue with this.

 

When it comes to the US, though, the problem is clear: our schools teach people how to follow instructions, not how to think. We discourage kids from coming up with creative solutions to problems and tell them "do it the way I teach you". This needs to stop.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Even back in the middle 1950s when I was registered in Engineering, it was "my way or the highway" and the blinkers were really on.  I decided fairly early that I didn't want to live and work in that environment and left.

 

Strangely, this attitude seems to have softened somewhat, but undergrads at the schools around here are still subjected to at least some of the traditional dislike for arts students.  It is a shame.  Later on when I was taking mathematics, I was required to take some arts courses, and I've never regretted it.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Well, Arts majors that don't take any STEM classes (or take the bare minimum to get a degree) are not held in high esteem by me.

--Ocram

[hym 358]

Admittedly, the UK is not the US, but if US research on the issue is applicable to the UK, then Sir O'Reilly is going about this wrong.  Intel (the CPU maker) has been funding research on increasing engineering enrollment for several years, and has found that a simple 3 part message is all you have to sell to radically change the situation.  Ranked in order of effectiveness:

 

1. Engineers are paid very well.
2. Engineers make the world a better place.
3. You don't need to be a middle age, balding, over-weight white guy to be an engineer.

 

Research suggests that if you can successfully communicate that message to students, you can raise the number of students considering a future in engineering from less than 10% to over 80 percent.  The problem is that the same research suggests the window for convincing a student to consider engineering closes very early in the student's life, and to maximize the chance of the student choosing engineering as a career path, you need to start steering the student in that direction by 4th grade.  The average high schooler has no idea what he/she wants to do for a living, but has almost certainly decided against a career in engineering.  Many educators would consider it an anathema to begin steering children as young as 9 towards a career choice, but this seems to be what it takes.  As many as half of US engineering students claim that they chose to study engineering because a parent or close family member was an engineer and began encouraging a career in engineering from an early age.

 

Personally, I think he is also making a mistake pushing the connection between engineering and art.  While he has a legitimate point about melding art and engineering to produce desirable consumer products, he is focusing on the illustrious, visible, and highly prized jobs, and largely ignoring the necessary, but largely invisible, engineering work that goes into making society function.  A civil engineer who is calculating how deep a sewage trap should be is will not likely find an art class helpful to the task at hand.  A geotechnical engineer who is determining whether a heavy crane will sink in the dirt or not does not need an art class to do the job.  A refinery engineer will not likely find an art class helpful when he is called out at 2am because fugitive water droplets entered the vacuum scrubber and caused catalyst to begin blowing out of the top of the tower.  A petroleum engineer will not likely find an art class useful during design of a blowout preventer.  A oceanic engineer is not going to find an art class helpful when she is stuck spending the next 18 hours closely monitoring barge flooding operations to ensure her employer doesn't accidentally send an oil rig crashing to the ocean depths.  A substation engineer will not likely be helped by an art class when he is designing a grounding system to ensure that utility workers are not accidentally killed by lightning while they are trying to restore power in a thunderstorm.  A PCB engineer will not likely find an art class useful when designing a new data transfer bus.

 

The point is that while it is perfectly acceptable to emphasize the importance of producing a well-polished product, it is a mistake to look at this part of the process and assume it is representative of the whole field.  If you need to build a bridge, do you want it designed by individuals who are focused on creating an aesthetically pleasing bridge, or by individuals focused on building a bridge that will be safe for decades to come?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, Arts majors that don't take any STEM classes (or take the bare minimum to get a degree) are not held in high esteem by me.

--Ocram

Let's not confuse embracing the arts with embracing arts students.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Under a purely mechanical engineering view, hym's vision wouldn't be 100% accurate.

 

I majored on machinery design and construction in my studies, and the creative students were one step forward than the others. Those who were able to think outside the box, to propose new ideas, to know and to think of new uses for the tools they had; they were consistently the ones who designed better industrial machines. Perhaps these machines would be more expensive later, but they did their job more efficiently. This is even more important when working in a custom-machinery environment, like my professor did. He quite taught us how to think creatively.

 

I'm not saying to include an arts modulus in an engineering degree, that would be increasing the already way too large non-specific subjects array. But it is necessary that we are not taught just how to solve the three exercises of page 43 for tomorrow afternoon; as I was taught before knowing my machinery design and industrial construction professors et al.

[Stevphfeniey 35]

I believe engineers who embrace the arts are known as architects ( )

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The views taken by some correspondents are too narrow.  I don't think the article suggested that the arts necessarily be a part of engineering formal education, but that attention to them should be encouraged.  All work and no play makes Jack dull.

 

As I said earlier, I became interested in the arts in a serious way when I was required to take humanities courses as a part of a math degree.  Nevertheless, I think that going to see some live theatre instead of boozing it up in the local beer joint is better for engineering students.  Broadens the outlook, and puts some view-ports in the blinkers.  If this is too difficult, then you are in the wrong course.

 

BTW, the courses I took at that time were Music Appreciation and Italian Language.  I don't feel at all bruised by either of them.  That music course was tough sledding, the first part was Keyboard Literature and Vocal Music from 1600 to the present.  It was a survey, but it was the first time I ever got an A+ on a term paper.

[Compdude787 916]

When it comes to the US, though, the problem is clear: our schools teach people how to follow instructions, not how to think. We discourage kids from coming up with creative solutions to problems and tell them "do it the way I teach you". This needs to stop.

Absolutely!! This might be partly responsible for why the quality of our education system has faltered in recent decades. I've always thought that our education system goes against free thought, especially when instructors try to push their own opinions on students instead of just letting people think for themselves.

 

I can see how arts can really enhance the creativity of engineers. This is especially true for civil engineering, which is my area of study. When you design a bridge, sure, you could just design a cookie-cutter girder bridge, or you could design a nicer-looking through-arch bridge that would actually become a bit of a landmark for the local area. Even with longer-span bridges, it seems very tempting just to build yet another cable-stayed bridge, but personally, I'd rather design a bridge that actually looks nice! Bridges ought to be a landmark, so that they are worth preserving for historical purposes. For other kinds of engineering, like mechanical or electrical engineering, focus on arts and aesthetic quality isn't really that important.

 

I can say that for when I'm building things in SC4 like interchanges, it always helps me to sketch it out on paper. I often do this when I build RHW interchanges in the game.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Now you know why I detest the Bauhaus school of architecture.  Who says a mechanical engineer has to make a plain, dull piece of machinery?  Look at some of the locomotives in the 19th century, especially in the UK, and say that artistic expression is unimportant.  Go on, I dare you.

[Duke87 1,070]

I believe engineers who embrace the arts are known as architects ( )

Nonsense. Your average architect knows as much about engineering as your average engineer knows about art. Architects make the building look nice. Engineers make it stand up. Then architects get all the credit.

[Compdude787 916]

Now you know why I detest the Bauhaus school of architecture.  Who says a mechanical engineer has to make a plain, dull piece of machinery?  Look at some of the locomotives in the 19th century, especially in the UK, and say that artistic expression is unimportant.  Go on, I dare you.

Yeah, Bauhaus is kinda dull. Of course, brutalism is the worst! Geesh, those buildings are as ugly as heck!

 

Personally, to me, a building has to look sturdy. Yes, it should look nice, but it should do so without making the whole building look structurally weak. 

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Critical thinking and creativity are two important skills that are discouraged in school and need to be encouraged and fostered (because they are both important and difficult to teach).

--Ocram

[TekindusT 3,809]

Now you know why I detest the Bauhaus school of architecture.  Who says a mechanical engineer has to make a plain, dull piece of machinery?  Look at some of the locomotives in the 19th century, especially in the UK, and say that artistic expression is unimportant.  Go on, I dare you.

 

Oh, those were beautiful!!

 

But remember, having a beautiful locomotive was the first step to gain more ridership, as people generally preferred riding beautiful or prestigious trains.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@Ocram:  You can't teach creativity, only suppress it.  Pretty much everyone has the creative urge, but some schools seem to be dedicated to stamping it out. 

 

Some engineering schools are particularly good with the 'my way or the highway' dictum.  They can't bear the idea that there might be more than one way to do things.  This may be fine for undergraduates in early years, but needs to be relaxed later on.