Getting household appliances fixed can be easier than you think

Duncan: fixing things around the house is not the preserve of the males in our society, nor should it be, and it doesn’t involve Engineering. It involves fixing. Engineering is often a four to five year course at a University just for starters, and a lot more to come before they become Chartered so calling a Dyson repair tech an Engineer is akin to calling the caretaker at the hospital a Doctor.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with education, either; it’s to do with the way the family and society have developed and the regulated culture that sees us increasingly moving towards a nanny state. But girls make some of the finest Engineers I’ve met. Their natural attention to detail, scrupulous preparation and careful presentation often exceeds that of boys’, and those I’ve known through our youngest have nailed and held senior positions in Jaguar, Grid, Airbus and a multitude of major Engineering companies who seek only the best. On the other hand, most can usually fix broken hinges and stick fanbelts onto Dysons, too. With a bit of help. Bet Lauren can reset her own circuit breakers…

Good for you Lauren ! and I bet you can do more than most young men in this day and age , dont stop learning , its all down to a practical and logical brain.

I strongly believe everyone should have a basic but usable knowledge of electrics and electricity. Our society would ground to halt in its absence, so understanding it is essential. And if you want to practice, Lauren, I can give you my address…

Excellent 🙂 Let us know next time you’re hiking around Snowdonia.

Sorry Wavechange; Duncan’s post caused me to run out a response without reading your comment, which I ought to have anticipated.

A lot of boys and young men have also been put off engineering [not because they have been told to put on an apron and go cook]. One of our biggest employment problems at the moment is the shortage of engineers coming through into the profession which is handicapping the UK’s growth potential at a crucial time. More effort needs to be put into ensuring that young people of both sexes are attracted to engineering. Only around 20% of A Level physics students are girls and this has not changed in 25 years. The Rio Olympics have shown what we can achieve when motivation and resources are directed at an objective. India shows the way where already over 30% of engineering students are women. What we need is a big uplift in total numbers of new engineers and cutting out the cookery courses for boys is not necessarily the way to get there.

John – if they are not taught at school how do they learn ? A child is heavily influenced by adults when young and what it learns it carries on into adulthood . this the whole basis of PC in schools as advanced by feminists ,they dont deny it , they publicize it vehemently. Most teachers are female . The excuse well its better for a males health if they learn to cook is ********, have you looked at what many women eat in cafes/restaurants/bakeries etc ,dont tell me its good for their health , if you check the figures males are now living longer and females shorter , why because they act like men drinking so much alcohol that in the US a bad result from a liver test is taken as normal and large numbers of females are dying of liver failure all because they are told to act “manlike “

Forgive me, Duncan, but I am not going to pursue you into that corner of the discussion.

But I will…. 🙂

Duncan: you have it all the wrong way round, I’m afraid. Teaching has gradually become a more female-dominated profession, but it always was, of course. Most Primary school teachers have traditionally been women, and most joined the NUT, making that the largest teaching union. But it’s a far more complex issue than you think

For the past twenty years males have been performing in schools less well than females. There are no easy answers as to why this has been happening, although some suggest the increasingly large part part played by continuous assessment in GCSE and even A Level examinations has favoured females, who excel at careful, detailed and precise, neat work whereas boys tend to excel at the single big effort or the examination model. Boys are also temperamentally and genetically less well-suited to sitting still and absorbing information; they prefer to move around and make discoveries. Boys also have shorter attention spans – again, a genetic characteristic and they also Psychologically seek instant gratification, whereas girls are adept at delaying gratification. I’ll say no more on that one.

Those same female traits are what make girls traditionally good teachers. But let’s examine the Engineering issue. True Engineering at the University level is far more than being able to make Meccano crane. It involves a sound grasp of advanced mathematics, modelling skills, computer skills, managerial methodology, deductive reasoning and far more. At its heart it’s a highly complex science involving branches of Chemistry and Biology and utterly dependent on a high level of Mathematical ability and a thorough grasp of Physics. In short, it ain’t easy.

Over the years, the pressure has been on youngsters to gain a university degree, without too much concern as to the nature of that degree. The better Universities haven’t made concessions to students and haven’t needed to, but the less successful have steadily lowered the academic quality of their offerings, so the much ridiculed’ Micky Mouse’ degree has supplanted those requiring sharp intellects and determination.

The Schools are, in the main, bound by the National Curriculum which determines that all children must be exposed to Mathematics, English and the Sciences. However, given the choices between academically demanding courses at A Level such as Physics, Engineering and Mathematics, and the less demanding such as Biology, Media studies and Psychology, which way is the average student going to jump? Children at the Secondary school age are also influenced mostly by their peers and not their parents.

I agree that schools must try to encourage the brightest and the best to do those courses at which they might excel and to which they are most suited. And therein lies the nub. Schools are very much the worse places to do this.

The year 12 and 13 students attend subjects by choice, and not by decree. Bright student tend to be both good at everything they do and to be the best to teach, so the average subject tutor will attempt to woo those students onto their courses. And charismatic teachers can do that very successfully, leaving the child in a course that suits the teacher better than it suits the student.

So no; the lack of girls choosing Engineering degrees is not down to a feminist agenda but to many other factors. But in the top Universities the percentages of females taking Engineering has been rising over the past 15 years, and rising steadily.

Ian- you are falling into the feminist/PC trap of -“boys have only one thing on their mind ” – and Female teachers- “we cant do anything with them ” and a whole page of likewise comments that get blasted over the media . In other words –they give up teaching them . I passed my 11+ with top marks went to high school where the teachers wore black uniforms you wouldnt dare cause trouble as a belt was waiting for you anyway . We all “belted down ” to learning and had a wide range of topics to learn from maths/science/music/ French/gymnastics/sports geography / music/art etc . None of it involved “life studies ” why ? because either your parents taught you or you spent a lot of time outside in contact with the general public – that was Real life – not pseudo- social psychology . When industry was “deconstructed ” by Maggie all the lower level male achievers were left without an apprenticeship this gave them some pride and satisfaction in that they were making something concrete instead of being servers now . All down to government policy of the City changing the social thinking philosophy of Britain. Males are now the underdog in society- ridiculed continually on UK media advertising / made fools of /put down etc while the government holds back a massive cover up in the number of young males committing suicide , worse than others . The “Donald ” has seen the light and wants to bring back US industry to the US but he is up against major monitory interests , Hedge companies , and a whole vast array of those with their noses in the trough . No this country has decided to go down a path of social engineering that leaves males in a state of limbo and most of us as figures in a Gallup Poll on how to get more money out of us by advertising.

I’m sorry, Duncan, but your opinion is exactly that: an opinion with no factual basis whatsoever. Lauren has asked us to get back on topic, but what you’re saying deserves a rebuttal.

Apprenticeships didn’t vanish because of a political decision: they vanished for a host of reasons, the most significant being that other countries were able to do the same work far more cheaply. But as you appear to be a Trump acolyte I would only add that the Education system in the UK has many faults, and you’ve managed to miss almost all of them. Perhaps we need a topic on Education.

Your right bishbut. About 25 years ago I bought a “security” bit set for my socket screwdriver from Maplin . It just shows you the bull you are told by manufacturers when they came out with this “security ” propaganda , when I checked into it intensively over a period I found out it was a manufacturers ploy to stop you repairing their products using various types of specialised screws . In my day you had the slot type and then came in the Philip’s type that actually gave a better grip as the slot type tended with cheap metal to widen and wear away . But this “new ” business is just a con no matter all the talk of “making it safer”-aka- bigger profits for repairing it. Now they make stuff that is impossible to repair unless you buy a complete assembly be it mechanical or electronic.

bishbut, you make a good point Being handy at home not only requires knowledge and common sense, but the correct tools. I bought a Makita tool box that included a large range of screw driver bits that suit lots of products, from your car to domestic items. It was inexpensive, as many tools are these days, and the quality of low cost tools has improved enormously. The screws that do require ingenuity are those with one way heads.

Quite agree malcolm , I joined the local library around the age of 8 or 9 (children,s section ) and spent the rest of my life soaking up knowledge of all sorts .There is something personal and inviting in reading a book than hours spent on the web (with trackers following you ) and that knowledge is more easily digestible as you can go over it again and again . Now, in many cases, much of it is hidden or verboten , I have a very large collection of technical books and would never throw them out , probably give them to somebody I think would benefit (educational wise ) when I am near departing . Knowledge is power let nobody tell you otherwise ,in the modern idiom – self-empowerment , as a certain group says.