Engineering Education

When did one start learning engineering?

My theory is, almost immediately after you are born, I think. Shaking your hands and legs is a starting point of learning motion control. Crying out loud, you start learning about sounds.

Then slowly you start learning about cause and effects. Manipulating the motion controls, you learn to flip over, move crawling, and then move on your hands and knees. Then you graduate to stand on your two legs, walk and run. You know you can cause your elders always on their toes to keep certain things out of your reach and then you start to learn to go and get them, either by jumping up or climbing on a chair. Then you learn that the chair can trip and you can fall.

From sound also, you start relating the cause and effect. If you need something you know you can get it by shouting, howling or simply crying out loud. You can use both motion control and the howling together to get me the result.

A little further grown up, you learn about gravity by jumping up and find that you do fall down. You learn about projectiles when you throw stones and you learn how to control them to bring down the mangoes from tree.

You run and learn speed; you kick a ball and learn force, distance and power; you kick a wall and learn about action and reaction; you swim in water and learn buoyancy.

All right, you don’t know all these names at that time – but one of the major points that is learnt is the cause and effect.

Then in the school and through college you start learning physics and mathematics and start relating whatever engineering principles you have learnt from experience to the physics and mathematics you are learning.

Until this time, the learning of engineering was exciting. But when precision works and mathematical equations enter into it and when you start engineering ‘education’, it starts getting a bit beyond your liking and understanding.

Then some start learning all those in the earnest and some start mugging up – because examinations are to be passed and they cannot be wished away.

All engineering colleges are not equally equipped to learn things practically and relate it to the theory that you have learnt. So there is actually a gap between the knowledge gained over the years and the employability.

So, it is necessary to have a refresher course to cater to the exact requirement of your employer specializing to the needs of the plant.

My joining a course of engineering diploma after my matriculation was quite accidental. Just join any course and learn a skill to get a job was the only thought in my mind and just landed up this course.

After I passed my engineering diploma, I did teach in a polytechnic – incidentally the same  as I had passed from - as an instructor for about 8 months, but soon I realized that before teaching anyone you must have a fairly good knowledge of what you are teaching. When your student asks you a question other than from the notes, you should be able to know at least where to look for the answer.

So I gave up teaching for the time being and joined the industry – it just happened to be the steel industry.