Thursday, July 1, 2010

Apollo 13 : what really happened and its implications for education

You may have seen the film, I was even privileged enough to hear Gene Kranz (4000 people in a room and you could have heard a pin drop), but what about the mechanics of problem solving used by the NASA engineers at the time. This pdf is worth a read to find out more.

I have been using and teaching the process described in the pdf above for 12 years now. It has been life changing.

This and this are also worth a read. Reassuring that they involve Nuclear power plants and things going wrong!

For children to leave school without being fluent in these skills is a travesty and I ask myself why the various Secretary of State's for Education (or derivative there of) have not made getting fluent in this type of problem solving, core to the school 6th form curriculum. Answer I think is that few members of the political class see problem solving, decision making and risk management as important(do they want the great unwashed to be able to do it for themselves, a cynic might suggest so). Teachers don't see it is important as they don't have the business background.

I deal with people on a regular basis who have good degree's from Oxford and Cambridge being paid by banks at least 2x my salary, but when confronted by a set of problems, attack them with a complete lack of structure, rigour and direction which end up costing their company money and reputation.

Thank you Mr. Sun for training me to become a KT Programme Leader in 1998, it changed my life.

No comments:

Post a Comment