My wife and I found ourselves pouring over the instruction booklet for a small, 4-wheel drive ATV toy for our three boys during this holiday break. The instructions were painfully useless, and the diagrams were worse. We were left to our own intuition and problem-solving skills to figure out how to attach the wheels, steering wheel, and powerful 6-volt battery.
Well, we were successful! The Howes are brilliant; what can I say? Or, at least, Mrs. Howe is brilliant, and I’m brilliant for marrying her! As my three boys took turns playing on the thing, I could tell they were pretty excited. However, I don’t think their satisfaction anywhere matched mine. I was proud, very proud, with my accomplishment. As the boys maneuvered around coffee tables, couches, and the TV, I felt incredibly satisfied to know just what the inner-workings of that machine were doing and that I had set them up that way. Sure, Google was more than a little help along the way. However, I was presented a puzzle, and I solved it. Or, I should say, we solved it.
I hope to see our STEM school students achieve a similar level of satisfaction. I hope they realize how much knowledge, skill, satisfaction, and ownership comes in the creation and resolution of the problem, and not just in the product itself.
And, I hope they create things they get to play with and that they don’t just have to hand off to someone else. So unfair!
