Political Training "humanist" Pedro Linares, a professor of ICAI, whose blog
accustomed often consulted because I like the same issues that he, in the interest of their links and, above all, for the wisdom and consistency of his views, speaks of the need for the university are trained "humanistic and integral ", focusing particularly on the engineering schools.
quote a few words:
" need to give value to our engineers to know what to do with science. If not, go where we have always been: a not always appropriate use of technology "
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We have to evolve into a more material related and connected to their education: philosophy of science, engineering ethics, engineering to change the world, taught by teachers who have faced ethical issues and values \u200b\u200bthat our engineers will face and who can guide them in these situations, to teach them how to see all the technology from this perspective values. "
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And we have to supplement with other materials humanist :
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a subject of literature, I think it only can write well that you have read a lot. If we can not read our engineers will not know to write, and this is critical in professional life. The courses normally do not have room for this, pretty much have with him ... - oral communication workshops: at least as important, able to communicate their ideas and their work, and make public presentations. As before, you can practice in other subjects, but it is difficult to learn in them. - leadership and teamwork, qualities increasingly valued in the professional world. This can be learned in the practical work of the subjects 'normal', but never more than a specific seminar. " As an engineer, trained in my case in the ETSII of the UPM, I know he is right in what he wants, and that the absence of educating the "whole" is an important gap in our schools of engineering, although many of them (eg ETSII) presumed not to have yielded to the absolute expertise and training to general and complete. But what I understand there by forming a "generalist" basically consists of adding subjects common to several specialties, but certainly lack the training
humanist and above all, necessary to give context to give the student an overview of their training, which is something more than a sum more or less chaotic subjects. I differ a little bit of Pedro Linares in the details, possibly because otherwise understand what it means educating the "whole. Pedro focuses a lot on its entry into the "values" of the individual, possibly because he teaches at a Jesuit private school, which advocates a particular type of security, Christians (or rather the Jesuits, who do not fully coincide with the " Christian values \u200b\u200b"of other congregations) that I particularly think of every point irrelevant to the exercise of the engineering profession. On the issue of values, my concerns are two:
- I think the values \u200b\u200band personal ethics of the individual and are essentially formed when one goes through college. And in any case, a technical school is not for that. I do believe, however, that should give importance to technical schools to matters related to work in large teams, complex project management, interpersonal relationships within organizations and conflict resolution in the workplace. Issues which come into play, I will not deny, the values \u200b\u200bof the individual.
- I always believed that such issues are better inculcate the student leading by example rather than specific subjects. And although one does not remove the other, I think most of our schools techniques are still in a very primitive level in terms of ethical actions of the student teachers to think of a course on ethics: I am referring to the performance of teachers in the classroom, in their teaching profession, during examinations or reviews, for example. Actions despotic or arbitrary or capricious agendas are the result of internal strife of a chair, examination with a vague relationship to the agenda of the course, draconian testing corrections or unprofessional, disrespectful students in reviews. And above all arbitrary: little respect for the game, changed on a whim. That nobody misunderstand: there are many exceptions to these behaviors, the problem is that there should be exceptions. Nor am I asking it to relax the requirement of technical schools, but that requirement is the knowledge and the student's responsibility, not by the student clubs and traps that add nothing to its formation (except develop an inexhaustible patience and strengthen desire to excel, of course).
Turning to more specific areas of Pedro Linares entry, I agree that it is essential that an engineer can write (although it seems excessive to me a subject of literature as such.) It's amazing how much English students, engineers or not, kicking the written language, and sometimes in direct unintelligible. This includes some teachers.
Such contempt for writing and language is no doubt inherited from the high school and technical schools seems to reinforce the idea that the way you write is not important to the profession of engineer. They do not realize the ridiculous and embarrassing that produces see the writings of some people who have a college education supposedly high level. And even more important to know how to write, and I agree fully with Peter also is learning how to make oral public presentations of your work. Although in the case of engineers, at least in many specialties of my school is a prerequisite to submitting the Final Year Project in court, but this exercise is too little, too late to serve as learning.
Otherwise, I do not know if Peter is being too ambitious in its approach. I agree that would be desirable subjects as philosophy of science "," engineering ethics "or" engineering to change the world, "he cites (although the latter would like to know the content, heh, heh ...) But I can not think how to incorporate many subjects to school time already sufficiently loaded. What I really missed me in my university days is what I was saying at first, something like a subject of "engineering context" or "overview of the engineering profession." Peter also quotes it in his entry:
"if not, know they interpret fixed without knowing without knowing place in the framework." is not desirable that the engineer is not aware until long after finish the race, the relationship between knowledge and respect of others and their knowledge with the world of business, with research and general society in which they live. In general the student is expected to be picking itself these relationships, but again that's too much to ask overloaded with teaching hours and subjects hard to peel of all the first years (some strong Concept Algebra, in particular, but also Differential Equations, Thermodynamics and Descriptive Geometry). Greatly contribute to the integral formation of the engineer a subject in which they explain the importance of studying in first year determinants, matrices and spectral theory, for subsequent application to the Strength of Materials, Nuclear Physics or a thousand other things. What is the importance of studying descriptive geometry of spatial vision to provide the engineer and subsequently understand the operation mechanisms. Also placing the importance of differential equations in any dynamic problem, in particular the thermodynamics and fluid mechanics is discussed below, and in turn two to learn the fundamentals of thermal and hydraulic machines. And the world is not always linear (in fact it is almost never, but for many problems of the world enough linear approximations), and numerical models of computer simulation are useful but limited to such a thing as another, and which contain mathematical simplifications. And much more English and computer skills are desirable, as are the languages \u200b\u200bthat are spoken in the world.
Another thing you could do is
exercise by way of case studies to business schools,
how certain types of problems facing the industrial world, at least how to approach them, and what techniques are available to the engineer to treat to solve . After 10 years of work experience, I can say that the latter is infinitely more important than many subjects of the race, they forget quickly, and the way some might have money left to pay a master to teach the things that should been taught in school.
Unfortunately, at least in regard to college public, it seems that all these issues on the agenda. One might ask with concern, as Nietzsche did over 100 years, what will the future of our schools (technical):
"One mouth that speaks and many ears, with a smaller number of hands writing, this is the external academic apparatus, that is the university cultural machine operation. " Friedrich Nietzsche. 1872.
Robles 
