{"id":264,"date":"2003-05-16T15:34:42","date_gmt":"2003-05-16T19:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blogtest\/2003\/05\/16\/should-high-school-students-design-"},"modified":"2018-10-27T15:35:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T19:35:24","slug":"should-high-school-students-design-and-build-bicycles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2003\/05\/16\/should-high-school-students-design-and-build-bicycles\/","title":{"rendered":"Should high school students design and build bicycles?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Factory schools teach science, math, and computers to students with the justification that “this stuff will help you, somehow, someday, maybe by getting you into the right college.”  Some students are happy with this amount of motivation and some students love these subjects for their very purity, their disconnection from the concrete world.  These are the students that we see at MIT and Harvard so in theory this approach is successful.<\/P>
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As evidenced by terrible average scores on standardized tests covering very basic material, the average high school student is not learning science, math, or computer programming to any perceptible degree.  And realistically why would we expect a kid to be motivated to learn these things?  They read newspaper articles about CEOs giving themselves $50 million\/year salaries but flunking exams in basic accounting at their Stanford Business School refresher course.  They watch television broadcasts of politicians’ speeches and there is never any reference to principles or ideas taught in their science, math, or computer programming classes.<\/P>
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The combination of a high degree of an abstraction and the apparent ability of people to reach the highest echelons of society in perfect ignorance of these subjects makes it tough for a lot of kids to hit the books.<\/P>
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Why not make it all concrete?  Suppose that starting in 8th grade the kids were told “Each of you is going to design and build your own bicycle over the next 4 years.  To help you do a better job, you’re going to learn some math, some physics, and how to use computers to simulate and model.”<\/P>
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At least 50 percent of what is taught in high school math and science can be motivated by the engineering challenge of making a bike that functions properly and weighs less than 100 kg.  In particular one can dream that this project-based approach would rescue computer instruction from its current abyss.  Instead of teaching the kids how to use Microsoft Office and write lame little graphics programs in VB or Java, we’d show them how computers can become analytical tools.<\/P>
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For the hands-on oriented kids we can let them machine their own parts and maybe do some welding, thus combining math and shop in one period!  To keep the klutzes from killing themselves, though, you’d probably want a design option that included only pre-cut tubes bolted together (you could never make a commercially viable bike this way; it would be too heavy and expensive to manufacture but it would be fine to ride around flat areas and for teaching).<\/P>
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The actual change in the curriculum would be minimal.  It is more a question of spirit and always having a concrete answer if a kid asks “Why do I need to know this?”<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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