Engineers can't light a light bulb?

Last evening my wife told me about a video she’d seen where a group of MIT engineering graduates showed that they could not figure out how to solve a most basic electrical challenge. Given a D-cell battery, a flashlight bulb, and a piece of wire, some could not figure out how to use these together to make the bulb light. While this initially struck me as quite funny, I also found the idea difficult to believe, or at least I didn’t want to think it was possible.

So, I wanted to see the video for myself. This isn’t some silly thing on YouTube, but rather part of a larger project made by Annenberg Media on the nature of learning and teaching, especially as it applies to science. In this case it’s the first chapter of a series made in 1995 called "Minds of Our Own." (This explains why my wife, who is a college music professor, saw it. She and her colleagues were involved in continuing educational training.) I went to the Annenberg Website and saw the video myself. You can too. It’s free, but you have to register. The first chapter is called "Can We Believe Our Eyes?" and the footage with the MIT grads is at the beginning. The whole thing is 55 minutes, and worth watching.

It’s true. The video is shot at the MIT graduation, with students still in caps and gowns. A group of them, approached individually, when asked if they could solve the problem, each said yes, but when handed the items they obviously couldn’t. One even said, "I’m a mechanical engineer, not an electrical engineer." As funny and unsettling as this is, the point was not to make engineers with a very high-priced education look stupid. The point was more complex and had to do with the combination of hands-on and heads-on learning. I suspect the MIT grads probably lacked more of the former.

One of the other conclusions is that we often think we know how something works but really don’t. Learning, therefore, involves us being convinced that we really don’t know the answer when we see the correct one. This is especially true with a subject like science. For example, a middle school student was utterly convinced that she could see in total darkness. Even after sitting in a totally dark room for seven minutes, she still believed that with enough time, her eyes would adjust and she would be able to see.

As we consider the greater engineering skills gap and even our own learning, this is something we need to stop and think about.