The future of Science is sitting at the school desk

We are living in a unique moment, a real technological revolution in which digitalisation is creating, day by day, a completely new world. The debate on social media, in the media and at the bar is focussed on whether the emergence of Artificial Intelligence is going to eliminate the jobs we know today, leaving most people unemployed, decimating creativity and the credibility of everyone on the planet.

Everything points to the fact that new career profiles will be generated with new professional qualifications, where engineering plays an essential role as the very foundation of this transformation process. But the real problem of this future, which is already here, is that, in addition to water drought, we have a drought of scientific vocations.

Engineers are not male and female. An emphatic, categorical, but both cruel and real. A profession that hovers around 0% unemployment suffers from a lack of talent and youthful drive just when we are immersed in the dawn of this fourth industrial revolution.

The solution, as always, is both complex and simple: It is just a matter of explaining the role and skills of an engineer to the young people in our country. In the Official College of Graduates and Industrial Technical Engineers of Seville, (COGITISE in Spanish), we have been bringing technology to the classroom for seven years now with the aim of ensuring that students have science at their fingertips .

For three months, the young people have a 3D printer at their disposal which they can use to create anything they are able to imagine. At no cost to the centre, COGITISE provides this material on a single condition: We need to see the results. At the end of the course, we gather all the students and teachers who have worked with these printers and share experiences and creations. The results are astounding: Creations that are original, practical and fun, young people who are excited and motivated, teachers who are satisfied with and proud of their students, etc. and an Official College of Graduates and Industrial Technical Engineers that is eager to bring this experience to more centres in the province of Seville.

In these seven years, more than three thousand young people from about thirty centres have participated in this experience which is continuing and will continue to grow. Boys and, very importantly, girls, have an opportunity to experience science, together with calculation and design, to see a practical application for mathematics that so many people say are boring and then to apply them to other subjects of an artistic nature. We have found students who have created everything from a fridge door handle to a trophy and a large-scale chess set. 

The programme also includes a number of educational conferences in the centres on 3D printing and on the work of industrial technical engineers because it is true that when you ask a young person "what does an engineer do?” the vast majority really have no idea (just try asking them). This situation needs to be turned around immediately if we want our own professionals to play a leading role in this industrial revolution we are experiencing.