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Evidence of a problem |
6. History - Many in our society have great difficulty attributing any intelligence to people who work with their hands, but they overlook the work of surgeons and dentists. However, when our Stone Age ancestors fashioned a cutting edge on a piece of stone to use as a tool, it was a deliberate act of hand-eye co-ordination, visualised and driven by the imagination. The cutting edge was a key concept in the culture of tools, evolving for our society into the technologies we know today. This happened because knowledge built on knowledge as social cumulation down the centuries, eventually enabling the achievement of the first precision flat surfaces. Precision technology was necessary for the development of electrical generation and supply systems with all the new industries and products that followed. Read the thesis, particularly Chapter 4- The evolution of technology up to the Industrial Revolution, Page 30 (search for p40 in Acrobat). 7.
Education - There have been a number of initiatives
introduced with the aim of helping education to appreciate the importance
of (1) industry, and (2) technology. These include: |
My thesis makes reference to a problem faced by our society as a whole. This also impacts on Education who have responsibility for passing on a slice of our culture. But our culture has been shown to be burdened by adverse value judgments in the context of sustaining ourselves economically. Because the problem resides in our collective value judgments, the evidence is not easily perceived. However, the thesis provides evidence in a number of key areas as follows: 1.
Anecdotal evidence - Once the idea of anti-business/anti-industry
sentiments have been grasped and accepted, the prejudices are easy
to recognise. Some 65 anecdotes appear in Appendix 5, and they provide
examples from across society including Education. 2. Survey - as part of the research programme, a number of research exercises were conducted including a survey of A-level students. Some 3100 students completed a 3-page questionnaire that was machine read producing data for statistical analysis; there are more than 80 graphs. Appendix 7 provides a summary including findings such as:
There
are many other findings that are interesting as well as serious
causes for concern. |
3.
Literature - Before 1760 there was no concerted
hostility towards industry and business in the UK, but that changed
in the period up to 1790. This change was driven by forces outside
education, but the cultural context and associated value judgments
have significance. Modern literature includes texts arguing that
the value judgments of the past are in the present. 4. Teachers - Teachers in training were asked to form subgroups of 4 or 5 and reflect on their perceptions of industry, to reach consensus, and commit their 'collective view' to a flip-over chart. The outcomes were essentially negative, and failed to comprehend our dependency on the products and services of industry. With such attitudes trainee teachers could not deliver Economic and Industrial Understanding as required by the Education Reform Act of 1988. But
of course teachers and teachers in training have never received
any formal instruction on the key role of our wealth creation activities,
and the pivotal role of technology within those processes. 5.
Insight - People with a non-technological background
have the greatest difficulty comprehending the issues. Even so,
from their earliest days they have been socialised into using tools
and technologies as tools as extensions of themselves in order to
enhance their productivity and capability. Without exception we
are all tool and technology users, and in fact we are totally dependent
on our tool-culture to function as individuals and as a society. |
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Dr Stan Owers February 2003 Download the Thesis and its appendices |
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