We need them across Africa! Deborah Fallows writing in the Atlantic:
It was the monthly "engineering week" when I visited the A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School of Engineering in Greenville, South Carolina, in January. Volunteers from one of the several local big-name companies in town were teaching special lessons. This week, employees from General Electric, some in purple t-shirts, were teaching about hydro, wind, and solar power sources.
One volunteer was boiling water in a glass beaker, which produced steam, which drove a pinwheel to spin. Another was demonstrating the evolution of light bulbs, measuring the amount of heat the bulbs produced, and engaging fourth graders in a discussion of what it meant to a bulb that much of its energy was spent on producing heat instead of light.
Whittenberg is -- no kidding -- an elementary school of engineering. The mascot of the school (below) is a robot, and the kids are not the “cougars” or the “tigers” but the “engineers.” Academically, the school presents lots of special projects around engineering and also folds engineering skills into traditional academic subjects...[more]