I haven't been over to Dr. Chuck's blog in awhile, but I visited today and found this most excellent rant. If you are having one of those days where you are just so pissed off at the glacial pace of change in engineering education, and so angry you could spit because of how many students who could be really wonderful engineers are nevertheless driven out the door by the relentless weed-out system that is designed to make men out of the boys, then this rant is for you.
That's really what the weed-out system is about, you know. Why it's so hard to change the system of all those miserable classes with horrid instruction and ridiculous workloads and inscrutable quizzes and tests. Because they went through it and it toughened them up, by God. Made men out of them. Put hair on their chest, as my dad used to say. It's a freaking manhood rite of initiation.
Which, of course, is somewhat problematic for women, who do not become men and are not, in any case, invited to the manhood rituals. I think this is part of why a lot of young women find engineering education so off-putting - the ritualistic aspects just don't make any sense to them. Whereas, for many of the boys, even though they are miserable, they know if they just stick it out, they will become men in the end. Sigh. Zuska thinks they should just go off in the woods and beat drums and howl at the moon. That way we can leave the classrooms for learning, rather than ball-breaking.
5:44:15 PM 
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