“Community Columnist” Michael Schrader

(About the need to improve education)

Written 01 May 2015

I had the honor and privilege of being a guest lecturer at Wayne State this past semester. As an older engineer, I think it is important to mentor younger engineers, as they are the future. What I have discovered over my career is that many of our young engineers are ill-prepared for the challenges that they face in the world; they are just “thrown to the wolves”, so to speak. The problems with this are several: they are forced to learn “on the job”, which means mistakes, and when you are civil engineers and deal with infrastructure, these mistakes cost money and sometimes lives; they are not taught how to communicate with non-engineers, and that creates a culture of secretiveness and distrust with the general public, elected officials, and taxpayers; they tend to lose their enthusiasm quickly and go into “retirement” mode, doing the bare minimum to collect a paycheck until retirement.

As a civil engineer, I am not surprised at the outright hostility towards the public sector highway engineers; if I were an outsider looking in, I would hold engineers in contempt as well. Poor construction; long delays; ridiculous expensiveness. From an outsider’s worldview, it seems that the engineers are nothing more than lazy and worthless sponges. When one is thrown out of the safety net of college into the world and told to solve the world’s problems efficiently, without ever having the experience, it can make one very cynical and jaded and “going through the motions”. My experience as a guest instructor verified what I had already suspected – our education system is a total and dismal failure. We spoon feed our children select information without giving them the proper tools to critically think, solve problems, and most importantly, fail. It is through failure that we learn how to succeed.

I assigned my students, many barely two years removed from high school, a design project to design a freeway through the UP. Much to my students’ annoyance, I was deliberately vague, only providing a very general outline, making them make decisions and “learn on the job” within the overall safety net of the college experience. My students, left to their own devices, created a product that is of better quality than most paid consultants produce. Several have commented that they appreciated the more “hands-off” approach and getting the opportunity to fail. They appreciated being treated as intelligent people instead of being talked down to and spoon fed.

As a parent, I instinctively want to protect my children from failure, from the harsh reality of life. As my children have correctly pointed out, they have to fail and learn on their own, and Dad has to stay out of it and let it happen, as painful as it is to watch. I think, perhaps, our approach to education has been wrong, and that is why our society is so troubled right now. Instead of sheltering and smothering the young, perhaps we need to allow them the opportunity to think for themselves and make mistakes. Perhaps we need to set the bar higher and challenge them to rise up to it, instead of dumbing them down. It is horrifying to know that there are people who have been “educated” who cannot write a simple coherent sentence. It is horrifying to realize there are people who have been “educated” who cannot make change without the use of a cash register or a calculator. It is horrifying to think that we have voters who do not really know about the issues even though they think they do, because they have been force fed information and not been allowed to think.

After this semester, I am optimistic about the future. Young people were challenged and far exceeded expectations when the educational shackles were removed and they were treated like adults, not children.

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