Do they teach reading in trade school

Tinman

@Canucker - That's it - curiousity. And the unquenchable desire to know things. Learning is the gift that keeps on giving. Many people dont realize that. There are no easy ways out.

Steamhead

Canucker said:

> @Steamhead said:

> Parents need to get the kids off their phones and video games.

>

> This.



Going to have to respectfully disagree with you on this point @Steamhead I work with people in their late 50's and 60's. Their childhood predated cell phones and video games yet they still can't be bothered to read the operating procedures we have and complain when there is corrective action because they didn't follow it. I'm 15 to 20 years younger and their boss because I read and understood them. I did grow up in the "tech" era, I just have a curiosity about how and why stuff works. It's not a new phenomenon.

Not the cell phones' fault in this case. They're old enough to know better.

Solid_Fuel_Man

It's the hunger for truth, efficiency, simplicity, and a knowledge of different ways to accomplish the same task that drives me.

Learning (hopefully) from my own mistakes is also a high priority, as is moving on from past faults.

Leonard

Not a heat tech but, My view of open book is that for other than trivial equations what matters is that you know where to find the equations you need and know how to use them.

I think purpose of testing is to see if you can do the calculations needed to come up with a solution, not if you have a good memory for those sometimes very lengthy equations.

Besides unless you use it your going to forget many details in ~ 5-10 years. But at 60 what counts is I still remember the generalities and know where in my old text books to look to for what I want to remember and calculate.

I do enjoy reading posts on this site to learn new things, gotcha's and pitfalls of heating. Little hard to get thru the heating jargone intially but worth it. Very interesting.

Do agree that inexperienced (new) engineers need some feed back from the field as to what didn't work well, but also need the why if you have it. Management likely filters that out though.

Gordy

I would hope that anyone entering trades school would not need a reading course as a part of the training.

Having the ability to score high on a closed book exam is great. However in the real world the material is a book, manual, Internet away for an answer. Most people tend to retain information that interests them, or is used at frequent intervals. Beyond that most information is not hard to find when the need arises.

Not trying to take anything away from the closed book high achievers just sayin.

hot_rod

Siggy noticed in his last years teaching at a Community collage that reading and basis math skills, like adding numbers, was really declining.

Those are grade school topics, students really need a good understanding of reading and writing for any further education.

Zman

I don't think the education system has ever done a very good job of reinforcing the "application" side of reading and math.

I love to torture my kids with questions like, "If that sealed, empty concrete tank measures 10'x8'x12' and weighs 50,000 pounds, will it float in water?". After that, I'll give them just the circumference and height of a cylindrical tank.

Good thing they like Ice Cream
They are getting pretty good at it.

Don't even get me started about compounding interest....

JUGHNE

Has no one mentioned cursive handwriting yet????

Zman

JUGHNE said:

Has no one mentioned cursive handwriting yet????

What's that?

hot_rod

JUGHNE said:

Has no one mentioned cursive handwriting yet????

You would get in big trouble if you cursed at the nuns, at my grade school!

Leonard

Think in WW2 they designed a concrete ship , maybe 6 or 10 foot thick walls to be immune to torpedoes. Took too much concrete ( war resources) to make it, had to be HUGE to get internal volume large compared to surface area (weight).

Same issue ......tv show myth busters actually made and flew a lead ballon. (in a hanger, no wind, ~ .001 inch thick). Very fragile.


Compound interest .... funny thing, for tax reasons I was checking up on monthly bank interest on CDs, found in 90's there were 3 slightly different bank software methods of calculating it. 30, 31 or 30.4 day month. Now days they all seem to use same software, it's the ACTUAL days in the month, that month ( be it 31, 30, 29, 28)